Beach Read has so many of the elements I’d expect of a light summer read, but there’s a glimpse of darkness within that actually makes this so much more engaging than you might expect it to be.
Our main character, January, has always felt like someone who believes in love and its power to transform us. She writes romance and has always looked for her happy ending. But when we see her things aren’t going quite to plan. She is struggling to write, she is grieving her father and yet trying to reconcile herself to the discovery that her father had a secret second life.
Upon arriving at his second hideaway home, January is nervous about what she’ll find. Nothing could prepare her for the discovery that her new neighbour is an old college acquaintance, Gus.
Like January Gus is a writer. But we quickly see that, like January, things in his life aren’t quite going to plan.
What follows is quite obvious – they slowly form a new bond, breaking down the barriers each had in place and eventually starting a relationship each has secretly harboured dreams of since they first met.
The interaction between these two was great fun. Seeing two such different outlooks and the little bet to each write a book in the style of the other gave it an interesting twist. Not everything runs smoothly, but it always feels like we’ll end up where we hope.
A huge thank you to NetGalley for granting me access to this prior to publication. I loved it!