That was what I’d always loved about reading, what had driven me to write in the first place. That feeling that a new world was being spun like a spiderweb around you, and you couldn’t move until the whole thing had revealed itself to you.
Excerpt from Beach Read by Emily Henry.
***
Stuck between a rock and a hard place after the passing of her father, January Andrews, a romance author, sets off to Michigan from New York City to write a book that will possibly get her out of her financial slump. As a romance author, she hopes to find inspiration from the small-town love story trope. However, dealing with the loss of her father and finding out about his infidelity, as well as heartbreak from the ending of her long-term relationship, January Andrews is in no headspace to write romance.
As fate would have it, her long-time nemesis, Augustus Everet, lives in the cabin next door to her. She now has to deal with her looming depression as well as the budding romance with her nemesis-turned-friend.
In a wager to switch genres and each write out of their comfort zones, January Andrews and Gust Everet’s respect for each other’s writing process grows and secrets which influence their writing style are slowly brought to the surface.
***
In what turns out to be an interesting twist of events, Emily Henry does not make this an enemies-to-friends typical romance book. She explores the intensity that comes with the writing process, the underlying factors that influence an author’s choice of genre, and the healing that comes with introspection, love, and acceptance.
This was my summer read, and I loved it. It definitely challenged the stereotypes that I carried about romance books, as well as the lengths to which authors have to dig deep into themselves to put pen to paper and come up with publications that their readers might either love or not engage with at all.
I would definitely recommend this book in case you are curious about the writing process of authors and what it takes to put yourself out into the world.
Feel free to get a copy of the paperback using my Amazon Affiliate link, from which I’ll earn a commission.
Let us know in the comment section if you have read this book and what your thoughts are on it.
Cheers!