Tuesday, June 2, 2020

89. Beach Read by Emily Henry

listened on Audible
narrated by Julia Whelan
Unabridged audio (10:13)
2020 Berkley
361 pgs.
Adult CRF, sort of RomCom
Finished 6/2/20
Goodreads rating: 4.13 - 44,576 ratings
My rating: 4.5
Setting: summer on the banks of Lake Michigan

First line/s: "I have a fatal flaw."

My comments: This is one of those delightful books that you don't want to stop listening to, you can't wait to start reading when you wake up in the morning or as soon as you leave work.  On the surface it looks like an easy romantic comedy, but there's a lot of grit to it ... and because it's about two writers with writer's block, and they had so many conversations about messy endings vs. happy endings, I was surprised with the happily ever after.  Lovely writing and narration.

Goodreads synopsis:  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.

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