Beach Read: Romcoms are literature too

Author: Emily Henry

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

January Andrews felt like she was creating the perfect life. Despite her parents having a brief separation during her childhood and her mother’s struggles with cancer, she had loving parents and a wonderful childhood, managed to achieve her dreams of becoming a writer living in New York City with a seemingly perfect boyfriend.

Until her dad died suddenly and everything came crashing down. At his funeral, she discovers her dad had been seeing another woman, and this throws January’s life off course. Her boyfriend is unable to deal with the emotional toll her father’s death and this revelation take on her, and breaks up with her. So at the start of our story, January moves to the house on the shore of Lake Michigan where her goal is to clean it out and get it ready to sell while writing her next book.

Unbeknownst to her, her new neighbour is actually her college creative writing rival, Gus, a moody LitFic writer who seems to scorn January’s romcoms. But the two make a bet: they both agree to try to write in each others’ genres. He’s going to write a romance, and she’s going to write a LitFic, and the person who sells their book first will get it endorsed by the other author.

This, of course, is a romance, and we know what’s going to happen.

This was my first Emily Henry book. I’d never had a pressing urge to check out this popular author, but I picked it up on a whim at a used bookstall in Bath, and I’m really glad that I did.

This book consciously plays into the romance stereotypes and feels almost Hallmark movie-esque at times, but it’s also clearly self aware, which makes it fun.

This book is a really good example of how even fluffy romance books can make you think more deeply, and the characters can have relatable struggles outside of their romantic ventures. I feel like romance often gets a lot of flack for being surface-level and escapist, and it is often those things. But in this book, while we do get the fluffy bits, we’re also able to relate to the struggle January feels at reconciling the image she had of her father with her perception of him after death. I think most of us who grew up in 2-parent households where our parents seemed fairly happy with each other would feel similarly betrayed in January’s situation.

I feel like one of the things we often forget about or overlook as adults (and definitely as children)  is the fact that our parents were people who had lives before we existed and those parts of their life still pull on them. This struggle added interest to the book, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I think this would be a good recommendation both for romance-lovers and for people who don’t tend to gravitate towards romance but want to dip their toe into the genre.