Reviews tagging 'Toxic relationship'

Beach Read by Emily Henry

66 reviews

emotional funny hopeful reflective slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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emotional funny inspiring reflective medium-paced

This spoke to me. I read a lot of fantasy and unrealistic fiction. This was refreshing. Grounded in real life emotions and experiences and humour. The final few chapters didn’t deliver as much as I’d hoped but I will be reading this again. Highlighting and annotating the humour and spice and most importantly the emotional and philosophical reflections. 

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emotional informative slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Why is this called beach read ….. it doesn’t even take place at a beach … it’s a lake 

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emotional funny hopeful reflective sad fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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emotional funny hopeful lighthearted reflective sad slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Title is exactly what you’re getting. 

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adventurous challenging emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

This book was such a beautiful commentary on love, family, grief, loss, and growing into your career. I loved this book. Emily Henry’s insights on personal growth are simply inspiring and had me hooked. I also loved the journey of the writing process and how Janie and Gus’s writing coincided with the plot of the book. The ending was satisfying. 0.5 off for extremely misplaced sex scenes (who has a breakdown and then gets railed?!) and some… interesting… verb choices for touching someone else nicely (really? scraping???) but overall a great novel. Henry should be proud of herself. This is one I would return to again after sitting on it for a little.

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
emotional funny lighthearted medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
emotional funny hopeful lighthearted sad medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
emotional funny inspiring reflective medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Somehow I think it helps me not to expect a real human (in my case heterosexual male) to be like the fictional characters I read when the author (identifying as female) only writes from the MFC perspective. Also maybe goes to more accurate represenation?
But also I really enjoy getting the other human's thoughts and feelings when reading a romance and when they have spicy scenes... And I think I seem to get annoyed about being in one person's head when doubting and rehashing things time and time again... Though I didn't have too much experience in single POVs in romance. So I think I'm coming out neutral on the one single POV story telling.

I didn't like
- Calling them January and Augustus... almost made me *uke (sorry Gus).
- I found January annoying and a little difficult to find smth beneath the surface (her being anything else than a product of her surroundings' situations/her environment)
- In my opinion the love story was little too easy
- the final 3rd act conflict... well I'm still waiting for an actual good one in any romance books I read so this is not only a beach read thing

I enjoyed
+ Friendship between J. and S.
+ quick, funny and intelligent banter
+ writing style
+ Didn't expect the whole plot point about research for each other's genre, which added a layer of depth to it I enjoyed.
+ Reflections on writing / authors ...
+ talk about the romance genre

Spice /Smut level:
1.75-2/5🔥 


Expand filter menu Content Warnings
dark emotional medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: No

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