Beach Read
by Emily Henry
★ Top 25 book of 2020 · #17 on Best Books of 2020
A romance author who has lost faith in love and a literary novelist with writer's block live in neighboring beach houses. They make a bet to swap genres for the summer, insisting that nobody will fall in love.
Best for: Fans of witty rom-coms with rival writers and a summer setting
Beach Read is #17 on BookWard's Best Books of 2020, out of 65 2020 books that cleared our data bar.
What Beach Read is about
January Andrews writes romance novels for a living and believes in happy endings, at least on the page. Off the page, she is reeling from her father's death and from learning he was having an affair. She has moved into his old beach house to get it ready for sale, and she is struggling with writer's block.
Next door lives Augustus Everett, a celebrated literary author she once competed with in college. He is just as blocked and just as short on money. Their solution is a bet: for one summer, each writes a novel in the other's genre. She takes on the next Great American Novel, while he tries something cheerful, which is not easy for a writer who tends to kill off his whole cast. They trade outings, from rom-com-style field trips to interviews with survivors of a backwoods death cult. The one rule is that both finish a book and neither falls in love. Grief, creative rivalry and the pull of a happily ever after run through the story.
Beach Read on the Best Books of 2020
Beach Read came out in 2020. Of the 65 books first published in 2020 that met BookWard's data bar, it ranks #17 on our Best Books of 2020 list.
Why it made the list: 679 readers have shelved it on Open Library; readers rate it 3.7 out of 5 (31 ratings). The list ranks each year’s books on how many readers have picked them up, how highly readers rate them, and how many are reading them right now.
Nearby on the 2020 list
- Cat Kid Comic Club Dav Pilkey, #15
- Heart Bones Colleen Hoover, #16
- My Dark Vanessa Kate Elizabeth Russell, #18
- Crave Tracy Wolff, #19
See all Best Books of 2020 Best books by year
More years: Best Books of 2019 Best Books of 2021.
The numbers behind it
- Readers: 631 want to read it, 10 are reading it now and 38 have read it, according to Open Library.
- Ratings: 3.7 out of 5 from 31 Open Library ratings.
| Signal | This book (0 to 100) | Weight |
|---|---|---|
| Reach | 85 | 55% |
| Reader love | 12 | 25% |
| Being read right now | 58 | 20% |
Questions about Beach Read
When was Beach Read published?
Beach Read by Emily Henry was first published in 2020.
Was Beach Read one of the best books of 2020?
Beach Read is #17 on BookWard's Best Books of 2020, out of 65 2020 books that cleared our data bar. 679 readers have shelved it on Open Library; readers rate it 3.7 out of 5 (31 ratings).
Why is Beach Read on the Best Books of 2020 list?
679 readers have shelved it on Open Library; readers rate it 3.7 out of 5 (31 ratings).
More of the best books of 2020
- Good Girl, Bad Blood Holly Jackson, #1
- The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes Suzanne Collins, #2
- The Psychology of Money Morgan Housel, #3
- The Inheritance Games Jennifer Lynn Barnes, #4
- Heartstopper, Volume 3 Alice Oseman, #5
- The Midnight Library Matt Haig, #6
See the full Best Books of 2020, the Top 100, or new books on Rising.
How we know
This page uses public data: Open Library reader counts and ratings, and Wikipedia page views for recent years. The description is paraphrased from real source text. Rankings reflect reading interest, not quality or sales, and can be affected by data gaps. Lists update monthly.
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