A review by bookswithsoumi
Beach Read, by Emily Henry

dark slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

Review: 
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Beach Read was chosen for the Book of the Month for April 2020 and was listed several times as one of the best romances of the year. Unfortunately, Beach Read did not live up to the hype for me. I tried so hard to love the book like everybody else on the internet. I was even reading it with my best friend, who had also been wanting to read this romance for a few months. 

I either do not care for the enemies-to-lovers trope (unlikely since I do love Pride and Prejudice), or the emotional chemistry between the two characters, January and Gus, was not developed enough for me to connect with the characters. 

The secondary characters were flat as well, mostly appearing in backstories like January’s family or in text messages like Shadi, January’s best friend. Pete and Maggie, the bookstore owners in the town January moved to, make rare appearances but do not help bring out the character traits of any of the main characters. 

I did not give the book one star and instead gave two because the feminist messaging did resonate with me. I liked that January was proud of writing women’s fiction. I especially loved the passage where January explains that even by calling her novels “women’s fiction,” some of the population is turned off, demonstrating the double standard that when people (usually men) write men-centered fiction, the book is just fiction and not “men’s fiction.” However, these remarks are made due to Gus’ misogynistic comments against women’s fiction. I was instantly turned off, and I tried to empathize and connect with Gus as the author intended, but I could not. 

Overall, I was disappointed with the book. I will have to make a more conscious effort to read books with an intentionally diverse set of characters, instead of just Shadi, who rarely makes an appearance, or Sonya, the woman that January’s father had an affair with before he died. Sonya is not technically the villain of the story, but it is interesting that out of the seven characters that appear in real-time in the story, the one making the most detrimental and questionable moral and ethical decisions had to be a woman of color. 

Time to read: 10 hours over 15 days

Tl;dr: I felt like I still stuck in COVID-19 quarantine with the lack of character interaction and growth in this book. 

Who might enjoy this book?: fans of the enemies-to-lovers trope and books about writers. 
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