Beach Read
A romance writer who no longer believes in love and a literary writer stuck in a rut engage in a summer-long challenge that may just upend everything they believe about happily ever afters. Augustus Everett is an acclaimed author of literary fiction. January Andrews writes bestselling romance. When she pens a happily ever after, he kills off his entire cast. They’re polar opposites. In fact, the only thing they have in common is that for the next three months, they're living in neighboring beach houses, broke, and bogged down with writer's block. Until, one hazy evening, one thing leads to another and they strike a deal designed to force them out of their creative ruts: Augustus will spend the summer writing something happy, and January will pen the next Great American Novel. She’ll take him on field trips worthy of any rom-com montage, and he’ll take her to interview surviving members of a backwoods death cult (obviously). Everyone will finish a book and no one will fall in love. Really.
Where Beach Read keeps showing up
Seven of our editors' lists feature this novel.
Also by Emily Henry
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A few of the closest reads from our full list.
What you might want to know about Beach Read
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Grieving and broke, a romance novelist holes up in her late father's lake house and discovers her college rival, a literary novelist, in the cottage next door. They make a writing-swap deal for the summer.
Beach Read contains some explicit scenes but is restrained compared to many contemporary romances. Most readers rate it 3 out of 5 on the spice scale. The romance is a slow burn with emphasis on emotional development.
Beach Read contains some explicit scenes but is restrained compared to many contemporary romances. Most readers rate it 3 out of 5 on the spice scale. The romance is a slow burn with emphasis on emotional development.
No. Beach Read is a standalone novel by Emily Henry. Henry has written several other contemporary romances including People We Meet on Vacation, Book Lovers, Happy Place, and Funny Story, all standalones.
Beach Read was written by Emily Henry, published in 2020 by Berkley.
Beach Read is 376 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Beach Read takes most readers 6 to 8 hours to finish.
Beach Read is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
