by Emily Henry
I also must thank my dear friend Liz Tingue, one of the first people to take a big chance on me and my writing. Truly, none of this would have been possible without you. I’m forever grateful to both you and Marissa Grossman for being on my team since the beginning.
There are so many other people who have been essential to my growth as both a writer and person, but I especially need to thank Brittany Cavallaro, Parker Peevyhouse, Jeff Zentner, Riley Redgate, Kerry Kletter, Adriana Mather, David Arnold, Janet McNally, Candice Montgomery, Tehlor Kay Mejia, and Anna Breslaw for being such wonderful friends and giving me such a lovely, vibrant writing community. You are all sparkly, fierce, hilarious, and ridiculously talented. Not to mention, like, really pretty.
And of course, I couldn’t write about family, friendship, and love if not for the spectacular family, friends, and partner that have been given to me.
Thank you to the grandparents, parents, brothers, sisters, and whole lot of dogs who have always surrounded me in love. To Megan and Noosha, the women whose friendship has taught me how to write about best friends. And to the love of my life, my perfectly favorite person, Joey. Every moment with you is the vastest, deepest happy-for-now I could have dreamt of. With you in my life, it’s hard not to be a romantic.
READERS GUIDE
Beach Read
EMILY HENRY
Behind the Book
Discussion Questions
Further Reading
Behind the Book
I have a friend who thinks The Shining movie is hilarious. She says she can’t watch it without laughing. Her favorite part is when Shelley Duvall finds the manuscript Jack Nicholson has been working on all winter, only to realize every page is the same sentence, typed over and over again. It’s a chilling moment in the movie as the character realizes the mental state of her husband.
But to my friend, it’s also a perfect punch line.
“It’s a whole movie about writer’s block,” she tells me. If the funniest things are supposed to be a little bit true, then yes, this is a hilarious moment. Because when you’re working on something as expansive as a book, there are a whole lot of moments when you stop seeing the work clearly, when you have no idea what you’re doing, when you’re pretty sure all those great ideas you had before you started were actually garbage.
There are moments in which you might not be that surprised to look down and realize you’ve written All work and no play two billion times. There are times when your whole apartment can start to feel vaguely haunted, like the viny wallpaper in the hallway is a manifestation of the plot tangles you can’t seem to work through, and it’s coming to life, slowly tightening around you.
And there is a kind of twisted humor to the idea that maybe this whole horror movie really is just about how lonely, confusing, and maddening writing a book can be.
When friends ask me what Beach Read is about, I tell them it’s about a disillusioned romance author and a literary fiction writer who make a deal to swap genres for the summer. When other writers ask me what Beach Read is about, I tell them it’s about writer’s block.
The summer I wrote Beach Read, I was feeling absolutely sapped of energy and inspiration. I felt like I had nothing left to say, no new characters drifting around my brain, no story I was desperate to tell. And yet, the sudden change to warm weather had me itching to write.
Every season this happens. The way the smells and colors of nature transform, the way the air itself feels a little different always makes me want to create.
I tried Netflix bingeing. I tried sinking into some fizzy, light, summery reading. Tried talking myself into doing some yoga, or walking the dog. I did a lot of unproductive pacing, and some lying in various positions on the floor.
But all I wanted to do was work.
Which wouldn’t have been a problem if I’d had an idea for a book.
No matter how I strained my mind, brainstormed, Googled stupid things like “what should I write about,” I couldn’t find a single kernel of inspiration.
And so obviously the only thing I could write about was not being able to write. It didn’t sound like a good idea to me. It definitely didn’t sound like something that would turn into a real book. But it was all I had.
So I started writing about an author with writer’s block. And I thought back to every time I was stuck, every season when the words just wouldn’t come out and the plots wouldn’t untangle themselves, and I thought about all the different reasons we get stuck, creatively and otherwise.
The things that come up in life that make it very hard to do the things we care about. The crises that make us question whether we really do care about those things, or if it’s okay to still care about them when the whole world seems to be falling apart around us.
I interrogated my writer’s block. I asked how it connected to all the other parts of my life. And the ways in which it seemed dissonant from the rest of my life.
And the more curious I became, the more inspiration found its way to me. January grew far outside of me, until she was a full, real character. A thorny, messy, heartbroken woman with a lush, meaningful story.
She became a romance writer, which, at the time, I didn’t consider myself to be. My questions shifted: What would make it hard for her to write? What would have to happen to make her doubt she could ever write again? How is her writer’s block connected to what’s going on in the rest of her life? What would it take to make her fight for herself and what she wants again?
Sometimes we lose the ability to create simply because we’re tired. We need to rest and recover. But other times, we can’t move forward because there are hard questions we have to ask first. Hurdles in our path we first have to jump or walls that need breaking down—interrogations demanding to be made.
And when we’re brave enough to do so, we can make something beautiful. Something we didn’t know we were capable of before we began.
So yes, sometimes making art is a horror story.
But other times, you fall head over heels in love.
Either way, you’ll probably laugh.
Discussion Questions
1. What traditional romance tropes do you see used in Beach Read? In what ways does the book deviate from or subvert romance tropes?
2. Whether you’re a writer or not, how do you see the concept of writer’s block in your own life? If you could give January a piece of advice for dealing with these phases of life, what would it be?
3. If you could visit one setting from the book, with one of its characters, whom and where would you choose?
4. January has a chip on her shoulder from negative reactions to her genre of choice. Have you ever felt “bookshamed” for liking a particular genre? Career-shamed?
5. Is your worldview more like Gus’s or January’s? Do you tend to be optimistic or pessimistic? Has that changed with time and experience?
6. Many of the issues between January and Gus begin with assumptions. How do you see January’s past experiences informing the assumptions she makes? Do you see this happen in real life?
7. Did January’s father deserve her forgiveness? Has she truly forgiven him?
8. Do you believe in the idea of Happily Ever After? What would your HEA look like in real life?
9. Do you prefer to read books with a certain kind of ending? Prefer to know what kind of ending to expect?
10. What is your perfect beach read?
11. If January and Gus got a sequel, what would it be about? What do you think comes next for them? What do you hope?
Further Reading
WHAT’S IN EMILY HENRY’S VERY OVERSTUFFED BEACH BAG?
Practical Magic, Alice Hoffman
Maybe in Another Life, Taylor Jenkins Reid
The Bride Test, Helen Hoang
What Alice Forgot, Liane Moriarty
Little Fires Ever
ywhere, Celeste Ng
Josh and Hazel’s Guide to Not Dating, Christina Lauren
The Proposal, Jasmine Guillory
Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
Mem, Bethany C. Morrow
One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez
99 Days, Katie Cotugno
Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro
The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender, Leslye Walton
Photo by Devyn Glista/St. Blanc Studios
EMILY HENRY writes stories about love and family for both teens and adults. She studied creative writing at Hope College and the New York Center for Art & Media Studies, and now spends most of her time in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the part of Kentucky just beneath it.
CONNECT ONLINE
EmilyHenryWrites
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