Books Like Beach Read: 10 Witty, Big-Hearted Romance Reads to Devour Next

Emily Henry's Beach Read is the romance that made a lot of people fall for the whole genre. January Andrews writes happy endings for a living and has stopped believing in them after her father's death and the secret he left behind; she moves into his lake house in Michigan for the summer and finds Augustus Everett, her gloomy literary-novelist college rival, living next door. They bet on swapping genres, she will write something bleak and he will write a happy ending, and the banter, the slow burn and the real grief underneath it all do the rest. Grumpy meets sunshine, rivals become lovers, and every other line is quotable.

If you have already worked through the rest of Henry's books, and most of her readers have, here is where to go next. We looked for the same things: witty banter with emotional weight underneath it, summer, lakes and seaside towns, rivals and second chances, writers and creative heroines, and grief handled with warmth rather than gloom. Heat varies, from a gentle closed door to properly spicy, and we have said which is which. Ten romances, all of them adult, all of them good company on a bank holiday weekend.

What to read after Beach Read

Every Summer After by Carley Fortune

Six summers on the lakeshore at Barry's Bay, a girl from the city and the boy from the cottage next door, warm nights working in his family's restaurant, and then a mistake that cost Persephone Fraser everything, a decade of silence, and one phone call that sends her racing back into Sam Florek's orbit for a single weekend. Lake house, grief, and a love story that grew up alongside its characters. Readers put it right beside Beach Read, and so do we.