Beach Read

4.5/5 stars

Thank you to NetGalley and Berkley for sending me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

January and Augustus could not be more opposite. While she writes romantic comedies, he is an acclaimed author of literary fiction. Neither understand the other. January would prefer all of her stories to have happy endings, whereas Augustus is fine with killing off all of his characters. For the next three months they must fight off their writer’s block while being next-door neighbors. Their solution? Each must write a book of the other’s genre. 

I really enjoyed this book. I was expecting purely a quick read and romantic comedy, but experienced a lot more. Both January and Augustus have secrets and family challenges that added a lot of depth to their characters. I loved seeing that these two polar opposite characters may have more in common than they originally thought.

Overall, I found the pacing of this book to be solid. I enjoyed how the story was broken up, following both the relationship between January and Augustus as well as their writing and researching processes. I found the start of the story to be very strong and then around the 60% mark, The last few chapters dragged out and I wasn’t really satisfied with the ending (I think it was wrapped up too neatly for the complexity of the story), but as whole I really enjoyed it.

Be sure to check out Beach Read on Publication Day, May 19, 2020!