Beach Read opens Goodreads in a new tab

My thoughts

ok lemme just start by saying i hate romance novels and your typical cliché tropes but ohgod i loved this book so much. And no, it's NOT a beach read. It's the kind of bool you can't keep aside once you pick it up, you finish it in one go. “He fit so perfectly in the love story I'd imagined for myself that I mistook him for the love of my life. if i had to read just one contemporary romance novel, I'd definitely pick this up. This book starts off on such a brilliant note, the characters and just amazing, the trope is unique, the pacing is great and you are just glued to it. but the second half does seem to forget everything and stick to the clichés the wanted to avoid??? (which is why not 5star), tho i absolutely loved the whole angle of the protagonist's father having a whole other life and how neatly that was tied up in the end. *SPOILERS AHEAD, DON'T READFURTHER IF YOU HAVEN'T READ THE BOOK* things i absolutely loved- 1. the unique names?!?! c'mon who names their kids January, lmao i loved it sm tho 2. the whole writers experiencing a writer's block trope 3. high school competitors turned lifelong career-rivals 4. January wasn't the fairy princess i assumed she'd be, the way she handles everything after the death of her father. 5. One very important thing this book pointed out (tho not in real depth) was how things are so different(and difficult) for non-men writers writing contemporary romance, the preconceived notion we have of women and their soft-heart being unable to bear anything "real" If you swapped out all my Jessicas for Johns, do you know what you'd get? Fiction. Just fiction. Ready and willing to be read by anyone, but somehow by being a woman who writes about women, I've eliminated half the Earth's population from my potential readers, and you know what? I don't feel ashamed of that. I feel pissed. In a nutshell- this book is a must read, even if you don't like the genre vv much.