Beach Read by Emily Henry

It’s been ages since I’ve written about a book I’ve read; it’s not that I haven’t been reading. It’s that I’ve been figuring out a new job and traveling to see my love(r), now also my fiancé, and, then, COVID.

And, also, I just haven’t felt inspired to write because I’ve been afraid of what all the new people in my life would think. And, maybe, I wondered what the point was. If anyone was reading my words at all.

But I’ve read a lot of really lovely books recently, including Anxious People by Fredrik Backman, which, if you have the chance to read that book aloud with your lover…do it. I’ve never enjoyed anything so much.

But I picked up Beach Read a few days before I traveled to see my love(r), Mark, not knowing that would be the weekend he would propose to me, and so I started the book on the plane ride home after a long week of loving each other fiercely. I’d seen so many people raving about it, but I wasn’t sure how I would feel. It’s been so long since I’ve read something contemporary and romantic. And an entire book about a romance writer, well, it almost hit too close to home for me. But this book, this book; it says all the things I’ve been wanting to say my whole life.

“Can you think of a single real-life romance that actually ended like Bridget fucking Jones?”

“First of all,” I [January] said, “‘Bridget fucking Jones’ is an ongoing series. It is literally the worst example you could have chosen to prove that point. It’s the antithesis of the oversimplified and inaccurate stereotype of the genre. It does exactly what I aim to do: it makes its readers feel known and understood, like their stories - women’s stories - matter.”

For as long as I can remember, I have loved love stories. I have loved reading them and writing them and have always felt a little less-than for doing so in a similar way that January, the narrator, feels, too. Especially when she was talking about Gus, her rival-slash-love interest, the one in college who, she felt, always made fun of her for writing happy endings. The way she felt while he critiqued her writing in class, it was the same fear I had when I would have my own fiction critiqued in college.

I remember not offering my stories to be critiqued until the last possible moment. Only to find a stack of notes from my class afterwards saying mine had been their favorite of the semester.

“This is really mature writing,” Tom Franklin, my fiction professor said aloud during a critique of my second story. And I wasn’t sure if I’d heard him correctly because he hated the first one I’d turned in. I had never written anything that wasn't full of Faulkner-like sentences. Or, more accurately, I’d never turned anything into my fiction classes that didn’t sound like it was written by a forty-year-old white male. To be considered a good writer, I had to write like someone else. But not this time. This time I was just writing. This story was straightforward and dangling on the edge of too much dialogue. And he continued, "it takes a sophisticated writer to write like this."

And still, him saying that isn’t enough to shoo away the flurry of fears I feel every time I publish something I’ve put my feelings into.

It’s really, really hard to write. It’s really, really hard to write when you’re worried about everyone else’s opinions. It’s so hard to write about love without overdoing it. It’s so hard to write about the difficulty of relationships and still provide the reader with some hope in the end.

“Gus, you only critiqued my stories. I was a joke to you.”

“Because I was an asshole! I was a twenty-three-year-old elitist dick who thought everyone in our class was wasting my time except you! I thought it was obvious how I felt about you, and your writing.” Gus said.

My writing as always been so private to me, mainly because I’ve always been so scared of how people are going to react when they read it. What will they think of me, what will they say. The worst is when they say nothing at all.

“I spent an hour or so reading all your writings and then writing in the notes section in my phone about my feelings,” Mark said when we first had started dating. I had been so afraid that I would end up with someone who didn’t see me, again. But I wasn’t prepared to meet someone who did.

It’s not just writing about writing in this book, though, because it’s the even more poignant points that seem to come through small cracks, making me feel seen and heard and understood. Like when January tells Gus about her previous boyfriend.

“He fit so perfectly into the love story I’d imagined for myself that I mistook him for the love of my life.”

We grow up thinking we need to have a certain career and get married by a certain age and have this perfect, perfect, perfect life, for everyone else, even it’s a miserable one for us. There’s nothing worse than choosing a life that is not yours.

“You chose someone who wanted a relationship. That makes sense for you.”

“Yeah, but that’s not enough.” I [January] shook my head. “You know that feeling, when you’re watching someone sleep and you feel overwhelmed with joy that they exist?”

A faint smile appeared in the corner of his mouth, and he just barely nodded. “It didn’t overwhelm you to watch him sleep.”

And it’s so wild, because I didn’t know what I was missing my whole life until I finally found it. When I read books, I wished the person I was with was Mark. I’ve wanted him my whole life. It’s why I stayed away from contemporary romance for so long, even though I love it, because it was a constant reminder of how I wished I was with someone I truly loved. I thought a man like Mark only existed in fiction, I didn’t believe he could be a real person in my world.

I’ve loved him for so long, and there are still moments I realize just how much he loves me. Like the time I woke up in the middle of the night, sweating and uncomfortable, and he asked if I wanted to switch sides to be closer to the open window. And when I nodded, he slowly rolled over me, making sure not to push me down, while I turned beneath him, no complaints in the air, and he let me drift away on his side of the bed that had already been sunken in.

“I think my alarm is going off,” he said, full of sleep and dreams, one morning.

“I’ll get it.” I said. His eyes flashed towards mine, “You will?” he said.

I walked from the bedroom to the living room, which wasn’t far, except at 6AM, when it feels like a lifetime away from the bed. When I crawled back across the sheets he grabbed me around my waist. “You’re amazing,” he said as his face nuzzled into my neck.

“Am I?” I could feel the smile creeping up my cheek..

“Yes, you’re just so amazing.”

“Because I turned off the alarm?”

“Because you got up to turn off the alarm. You know I hate having to do that. You’re just amazing.”

And off he went, twitching in the way he does when he’s on the edge of awake and asleep, right before he starts grinding his teeth. And I was overwhelmed.