‘Beach Read’ by Emily Henry: Let someone in; don’t build walls

Love Such a short word, yet it holds different meanings for different people. To some, love is unconditional. To others, it’s transactional. Sometimes, love is home. And for people like January in Beach Read by Emily Henry, love is a verb, something you do. Something you choose, even when it feels absurd to keep choosing it. To her, love is the one thing that still has the power to heal the world. And she refuses to let go of the idea that love can be everything we hope it to be.

Emily Henry’s writing blends humour and heartbreak, and Beach Read is no exception. It’s witty and tender, filled with banter throughout.

Beach Read is a book about books. A story for readers who’ve given up on love, and for those who still dare to believe in it. It’s about the way stories shape our lives, our beliefs, and how we see the world. It is about hope. Grief. Secrets. Forgiveness.

We follow two writers, January (Janie) and Augustus (Gus), who once met in college, believing themselves to be rivals. Now, years later, they find themselves living next door to each other, both creatively stuck and both carrying the weight of unspoken things.

January was raised in a loving family that believed in the power of love to make sense of a world that often doesn’t. That’s how she learned to expect beauty, kindness, and happy endings. When her mother battled cancer, January thought her world might fall apart. But love held them together.

“When the world felt dark and scary, love could whisk you off to go dancing; laughter could take some of the pain away; beauty could punch holes in your fears. I decided then that my life would be full of all three.”

But life, as always, has its own plans. After her father’s sudden death, January learns of secrets that shatter her image of him, and of love itself. She’s heartbroken, broke, and reeling from a breakup. To make sense of it all, she moves into the lake house her father left behind, hoping to find pieces of the man she thought she knew.

That’s where she meets Gus, her next-door neighbour. Gus, a literary fiction writer, is the opposite of January. He doesn’t believe in happy endings. To him, “Life is pretty much a series of good and bad moments right up until the moment you die.”

And maybe he’s right. But it’s the hope that things might get better that makes life bearable. The possibility of love. Of joy. Of laughter.

As the story continues, they become friends. In an attempt to understand each other’s worlds, they agree on a challenge to switch genres: January will try writing a literary fiction, while Gus will write a romance book. What begins as a writing challenge becomes an act of empathy, of walking in each other’s shoes, of asking not just “what do you write?” but “why do you see the world the way you do?”

Through January’s eyes, we begin to understand Gus’s world. His mother stayed with his abusive father, even when he believed leaving was the right thing to do. And the people he needed to stay? They left. When it mattered most, and this experience changes you, it teaches you not to trust love, because love in his life didn’t stay.

When that happens enough times, you begin to wonder: What’s wrong with me? Why doesn’t anyone stay? You build walls. You stop trusting people’s intentions. That’s the life Gus has lived.

“No one had chosen Gus. From the time he was a kid, no one had chosen him.”

And that’s what love is about, isn’t it? To love someone well, you have to know them. You have to understand the parts of them that no one else sees, and choose them anyway. But that kind of love requires vulnerability. A belief that someone, someday, will stay.

Emily Henry writes January with a tenderness that makes her real. She’s messy, hopeful, heartbroken, yet she still chooses to believe in love. She cries and laughs in the same breath. She holds space for fear and joy. And Gus, for once, lets himself wonder if maybe, just maybe, life could look different from this angle.

Beach Read is a funny, heartwarming story that will leave you with hope. That life doesn’t have to be so bad. It’s okay to let someone see you, the real you, with no filters, and let them decide what to do with what they find.

Give yourself permission to feel it all. Observe your emotions. Let them speak. Most of the time, they just want to serve and save you.