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Reviews tagging 'Religious bigotry'

Beach Read by Emily Henry

48 reviews

dark emotional hopeful medium-paced

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adventurous dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring lighthearted reflective sad 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

I've been in a reading slump for the last few months and I am very glad this the book that broke me out out of it. 

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring lighthearted reflective relaxing sad tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
adventurous emotional funny hopeful 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

I found Beach Read harder to get into than Emily Henry's other books, but I still really enjoyed myself. The characters took me longer to warm to, too. The main characters were both messy in their own ways, with tonnes of baggage, though that itself wasn't the issue.
I think it was that I was expected January to be more... well, more of a hopeless romantic. You know, the way she is described in the blurb. But she really, really wasn't. She was more cynical and pessimistic than any other character, including so-called cynic, Gus. It's not surprising considering what she has been through, but still... It was also frustrating watching her self-sabotage time and time again. Like, c'mon, have a conversation BEFORE jumping to conclusions? No miscommunication tropes here, just straight up lack-of-communication and jumping-to-conclusions tropes, if those exist.
 

There was also quite a lack of beach time for a book named Beach Read.

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emotional funny hopeful reflective 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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challenging emotional funny hopeful medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes

Didn't shatter my world or anything but it was entertaining.

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emotional lighthearted medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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emotional funny inspiring lighthearted relaxing medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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

Expand filter menu Content Warnings

I always say it's a cop-out for writers to write about writers (or editors, or publishers, or librarians - anybody bookish). Everyone knows the adage "write what you know," so I think it's only natural for writers to try it out, but it can get a bit monotonous. And, being a writer and language arts buff myself, such narratives don't feed my escapist hunger quite as well as books about chemical engineers or nurses or computer programers.

That being said, it's always a little impressive when an author manages to write writers while avoiding banality and too much self-indulgence. I think Emily Henry achieves as much with this book, at least more so than Book Lovers, which I read first. It's about writers, but it's also about family, grief, secrets, pining, and the ugly parts of love. This novel wasn't as gratifying as other romance novels, not because it's less romantic or the ending is less happy, but because there are parts of it that were sad and, like in life, could not be resolved.
I have a soft spot for "I've always loved you, you just didn't notice" type romances.

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