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Beach Read
440 pages
A sun-drenched, banter-filled exploration of creative burnout and the terrifying vulnerability of letting yourself believe in happy endings again.
What it feels like
Reading this feels like sitting on a sun-warmed porch with a glass of wine, trading sharp barbs with someone who sees right through your defenses. It is a masterclass in the rivals-to-lovers dynamic, but beneath the crackling, laugh-out-loud banter lies a surprisingly tender exploration of grief, betrayal, and creative burnout. The prose is effortlessly witty and deeply conversational, pulling you through the pages at a brisk, addictive pace. It balances the breezy, escapist atmosphere of a summer lakeside retreat with the heavy, melancholic reality of two people trying to figure out who they are when their worldviews have shattered. Perfect for readers who want their swoon-worthy romances grounded in messy, relatable emotional baggage and hard-won hope.
- Mood
- sun-drenched
- melancholic
- hopeful
- breezy
- Tone
- wry
- witty
- vulnerable
- earnest
- Pace
- brisk
- Themes
- healing from grief · creative burnout · the validity of joy · trust after betrayal
- The writing
- Sharp, conversational, and effortlessly witty, balancing laugh-out-loud banter with moments of striking emotional clarity.
- The arc
- Moves from cynical burnout and guarded grief toward vulnerable, hard-won hope and open-hearted love.
- Who it's for
- Readers who love their rom-coms spiked with real emotional baggage, sharp dialogue, and a deep appreciation for the writing process.
Content notes
- grief
- parental infidelity
- death of a parent
- cancer (past)
About the book
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.
Description from Open Library.
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