Beach Read

Beach Read by Emily Henry, 361 pages

January Andrews is reluctant at best to move into her late father's beach house, what with it being the location of a long extramarital affair that she only learned about at his funeral. But she needs to clean it up and sell it, and well, it would definitely be a good place to work on the romance novel her agent is nagging her to finish. Too bad January's neighbor is Augustus Everett, dreamboat literary fiction writer and January's college nemesis. When chance brings the two together, they challenge each other to write in each other's genre, with the loser being forced to promote and write a book blurb for the other.

This is a romance novel with some very serious topics to chew on between the meet-cutes and steamy makeout sessions. It's a good bridge between "regular" fiction and romance, creating a cozy spot in the Venn diagram for readers of each (and now both). The issues January and Gus experience are very real, even if the coincidences that bring them together are stereotypical romance tropes. A fun read, and a quick one too.