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Hi my name is Wistful Mush cause this book made me woefully wish I wasn’t such a loveless aromantic��how dare you. Books like this should be outlawed so please stop publishing this...illegal substance.

He fit so perfectly into the love story I’d imagined for myself that I mistook him for the love of my life.

Beach Read is so much more than the romcom break I’d been craving in the rapid fire twists of 2020 (which is starting to feel like the first installment in a badly written dystopian slash pandemic slash revolution slash go-with-kitchen-sink-approach book series). It’s romantic and adorable and hot and hilarious, yes, but it’s also heartbreakingly raw, genuine, clever, well-written, and addictively told. Not to mention fresh and refreshing because it’s not just cheese and fluff.

Before I elaborate on that: you have to listen to my playlist for this book it’s so perfect and precious and light I can’t believe I put it together ��

I could plot all day, but it didn’t matter if I didn’t fall into the story headfirst, if the story itself didn’t spin like a cyclone, pulling me wholly into itself. That was what I’d always loved about reading, what had driven me to write in the first place. That feeling that a new world was being spun like a spiderweb around you and you couldn’t move until the whole thing had revealed itself to you.

Now, allow me to list all the ways in which this not-exactly-enemies-to-lovers book is worthy of nothing less than five stars:



�� Authors Face Off: Honestly, whichever bookgodfearing bookworm would see this premise of two rival (secretly attracted to one another) authors starting a bet to write each other’s genres (which are totes at odds) and not raise interested eyebrows?

And rightly so, because we get a thorough dive into an author’s life—the word count goals, the writing marathons, the thoughts on readers�� reviews, the deadlines and pressing but encouraging editors. Reading our two authors narrate and make up stories about everyone and everything in such contrasting ways showed perfectly how their differing views of life and people were based on their genres (or, should I say, their preferred genres were based on their differing and opposite outlook on life). I soaked it all right up and still needed more. Not to forget the little comments on women in the writing industry and the utter sexism that is the label “Women’s Fiction.��

“If you swapped out all my Jessicas for Johns, do you know what you’d get? Fiction. Just fiction. Ready and willing to be read by anyone, but somehow by being a woman who writes about women, I’ve eliminated half the Earth’s population from my potential readers.��

�� Lit Fic VS. Chick Lit: Are there any two genres farther apart than Literary Fiction and Romantic Fiction? I can’t personally think of one, and �ٳ󲹳�’s precisely why this clashing and molding of the two was so unique. Janie and Gus were the genres incarnate; warring outlooks of life in flesh. And where they met, they made something new—they sought “the shit and the wildflowers�� of the world and saw that there would always be both shit and wildflowers in the world.

I should’ve stopped telling myself a story and actually looked around at the world.

�� Happily Ever After Happy For Now: This, this is the aforementioned something new, the middle ground; if Literary Fiction and Romance had an affair and made a baby, this book and idea would be it. This Happy For Now is what, above all my other points, is what made this book a treasure I couldn’t not love (as always, excuse the double negative).

In books, I’d always felt like the Happily Ever After appeared as a new beginning, but for me, it didn’t feel like that. My Happily Ever After was a strand of strung-together happy-for-nows, extending back not just to a year ago, but to thirty years before. Mine had already begun, and so this day was neither an ending nor a beginning.
It was just another good day. A perfect day. A happy-for-now, so vast and deep that I knew—or rather believed—I didn’t have to worry about tomorrow.

�� The One In The Whole World Everest Everett: Cynical, teasing, grim, messed up, fan of casual short-term relationships, etc etc, I’m genuinely confused whether Gus is my type of guy or me, period. I mean, I feel like I’m more of a Gus than even Gus is a Gus, what with him being an anti-romantic (who can have a slight romantic streak) and me being an aromantic (who is generally hopeless in the area, if you’re not aware). Anyhow, things like this made me relate to him on a primal level WTF ��

“Entering a relationship is borderline sadomasochistic. Especially when you can get everything you would from a romantic relationship from a friendship, without destroying anyone’s life when it inevitably ends.��
“Everything?�� I said. “Sex?��
He arched an eyebrow. “You don’t even need friendship to get sex.��

�� Totch Banter To Live For: I must shamelessly confess to multiple occasions of actually screaming in earsplitting laughter, which lead to my brother shouting “what the fuck is wrong with you�� from all the way in his room.

“You’re sick and twisted, January Andrews,�� Gus said. “That’s what I love about you.��
“O��, �ٳ󲹳�’s what it is.��
“Well,�� he said. ��One thing. It seemed too crass to invite you to my aunts�� house and then bring up your ass.��

This is of course a rare event to celebrate because �� my laughs usually don’t make any sounds and are more similar to being choked and �� I had been extremely tired and grim the past few days due to the pressure of exams plus choosing to also binge multiple books on race and racism and the sobering political and sociological climate of these weeks and �� annoying and bewildering my elder brother is my lifelong goal. So Bless you, Emily Henry, I knew I needed this but I really didn’t know how much I needed this or how good it would actually be.



�� Warning, Steam Is In The Air, Too Hot You’ll Get Burned: You know, I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to comment further on this aspect because, well, kids. Just please take the adult shelving serious as there is graphic mature content. (NOTE: two authors doing it against a bookshelf is something I never knew I needed.)

Mom’s first diagnosis taught me that love was an escape rope, but it was her second diagnosis that taught me love could be a life vest when you were drowning.

�� Deep Stuff: When picking up Beach Read, this is the aspect I expected least. With aptly handled grief, trauma, love of a father, friendship, and even a swim in the waters of the survivours of a cult, this felt like a romcom gone terribly wrong—or perfectly right, depending on your perspective. In mine it was right, oh it was just right. Also, not sure if it fits here but, can I point out how much I appreciate the fact that they actually asked each other what was wrong and talked it out like adults instead of wallowing over miscommunications for weeks or days??? PREACH.



�� Awwww By the Power of 96784: Someone needs to call for an ambulance because my face has split from grinning so wide for hours straight like an idiot teen in love, which is absurd as you know and frankly these two big thirty-somethings acted more like teens in love than I ever will but dammit this was a sweet gem and I wish people could make me fall in love as much as books and fictional characters and impossible romantic dreams do.

It felt a little bit like Gus and I were two aliens who’d stumbled into each other on Earth only to discover we shared a native language.

In the end, with social distancing systematically lessening the dating scene and the months-long quarantine turning the feel good adventures of beach houses into a wistful dream, I believe this has been, and will eternally remain to be, the best time in the history of humanity to publish beach romances.

And trust me, right now, you need this book in your life.
I desperately and undoubtedly did.

Over and out.