beach read by emily henry
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“If you think the story has a sad ending, it's because it's not over yet.” ― Emily Henry, Beach Read
this may truly have been the best book i have read so far in the year of 2021. emily henry wrote a fucking masterpiece with this book. its a romance that will literally sweep you off your feet and make even the most cynical person believe in love, but its also so much more. she paints the most beautiful picture of how complicated life and love can truly be. it can be happiness and sadness and it can be anger and contentment. love is an extremely complicated emotion, and life is full of multi-faceted experiences that can push our boundaries and redefine what certain emotions mean. our MC, january, struggled with this. january is realizing that life sucks and its fucking complicated and you don't have to romanticize your life for it to be beautiful.
anyway, this book follows january who has just found out that her recently deceased father was having an affair for most of her childhood. a year after his passing she moves into his second home on lake michigan (the house where he lived with "the other woman"). here january is tasked with not only writing a book that she has struggled to even start for the last year, but also pack up and sell the house, all while confronting her complicated feelings about her father. here she also runs into her college nemesis, augustus, a best-selling author and certified mysterious sexy man. together they compete for who can write the best book in each others genres as they go on adventure for "writing research" and maybe fall in love).
if i can persuade you to read one book on this entire blog, it is this one. this literally probably changed my life. it made me feel seen in a way i didn't even know i needed to be seen. it helped me unpack the experience of being an adult and seeing your parents as real people for the first time and taking off the rose-colored glasses you sometimes look at your childhood through.
a stunning novel. a romance and so much more. go read this NOW.













