A review by blueyreadseverything
Beach Read by Emily Henry

5.0

Listen...If you're not interested in seeing two characters work through some of their emotional baggage while also realizing they're falling in love with each other, this is not the book for you.
January Anderson lost her beloved father about a year ago, since then her life has basically come crashing down around her. So she retreats to the beach house in Michigan that her father owned, that she only found out about after he passed away. One he shared with a woman other than January's mother.
Living next door to her new beach house is Augustus Everett, the guy who, in all of her writing classes in college, spent his time critiquing her 'happily ever after" endings and whose head is so big he needs an entire ice machine to bring down the swelling.
January has a book due in three months, emotional turmoil to sort through, as well as a beach house to clean out and put on the market, she doesn't have time for the egotistical boy next door, until...A dare is proposed. He'll write a book with a happily ever after, and she'll write a book without one. Whoever sells their book first will get public endorsements from the other. January agrees and the caveat is added that they have to "teach" each other the things they need to know to write the genre switch. And they have to try to stay away from each other while they do it.
This book was incredible. I didn't think it could get any better than People We Meet On Vacation, but it did.
I've seen the reviews from others that they were expecting fluff (there's definitely fluff) and that this book is too full of emotional angst and they were misled...but in my opinion, fluff is made fluffier by emotional stakes. Fluff for the sake of fluff is pointless. Give me some angst, leavened with a bit of fluff, and I'll show you a book so beautifully written, so sweet and lovely, that it's the first book I've EVER assigned five stars to before finishing it.
It's definitely worth the read. Definitely worth the angst. And even though I borrowed it from my library, I'll be purchasing it as soon as I finish this review because I already know I want to reread it forever.
Emily Henry just made herself a MUST BUY for me. And I can't be mad at it.