“I did what any reasonable adult woman would do when confronted with her college rival turned next-door neighbor. I dove behind the nearest bookshelf.“

Beach Read is told from the perspective of January Andrews, a bestselling romance author who is in the midst of a personal crisis that has impacted her desire to write another happy romance, but with a deadline looming she has very little choice in the matter. When she decides to spend the summer at a beach house left to her by her late father, she hopes that she can use this time to write while tying up some personal matters. Surprisingly, her next door neighbour is none other than Augustus Everett, an author of literary fiction and her former college classmate who was heavily critical of her writing. With both parties in the midst of writer’s block, they agree to a friendly competition that has them attempting to write in each other’s genre; January will write a story that is on the broody side, and Augustus will write a happy romance. As they spend time learning from one another the words begin to flow, and bonds slowly begin to form.
The premise of Beach Read appealed to me on so many levels. For one, I love a good contemporary romance novel, and when a story focuses on a pair of writers in a small town on the beach… well, that becomes a must-read book for the summer. As excited as I was to read this story, it ultimately left me underwhelmed and slightly disappointed.
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