Beach Read

“Back then, true love had seemed like the grand prize, the one thing that could weather any storm, save you from both drudgery and fear, and writing about it had felt like the single most meaningful gift I could give.”

This quote explains January’s choice to write romance novels. She puts a lot of faith in the power of love and believes her greatest gift to the world would be novels that could spread that love to others. January understands that love is most powerful when shared with others.

“Rivalry or not, it had been palpable how much we wanted each other that night. We had both been ready to make a bad decision.”

This quote describes January’s perspective on her dance with Gus at the frat party. Despite their rivalry and the criticism he has towards her writing, January feels an attraction to him. This spark is part of what ignites the fire of their romance years later.

“Again and again he told me I wasn’t myself. But he was wrong. I was the same me I’d always been. I’d just stopped trying to glow in the dark for him, or anyone else.”

Here, January describes how her relationship with Jacques came to an end after her dad’s death. When she could no longer force herself to be the perfect person for Jacques, he didn’t feel the same about her anymore. He believed she wasn’t herself if she was feeling these negative emotions, but January was just showing Jacques a side of herself that she’d previously kept concealed.

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

January is describing how the romanticism of her life backfired. She saw Jacques as a leading man, perfectly spontaneous and romantic. She wanted so badly for him to fit that role for her that she neglected actually falling in love with him. He just fit the part, so she went with it.

“As different as I’d thought we were, it felt a little bit like Gus and I were two aliens who’d stumbled into each other on Earth only to discover we shared a native language.”

At this moment, January is realizing how she and Gus can connect through their love of writing. She learns that Gus writes to try to understand his own negative experiences and relates to that search for answers. Despite the fact that they write for different reasons, writing for both of them is tied deeply to their emotions.

“I DREAMED ABOUT GUS Everett and woke up needing a shower.”

This sentence, which makes up the entirety of Chapter 13, serves to illustrate January’s growing feelings towards Gus. She is becoming not only more mentally attracted to him, but more physically attracted to him as well. The power of this quote is in what January leaves unsaid. Though her dream is not detailed, the fact that she feels she needs a shower after hints at the steamy nature of it.

“Now that seemed like a blatantly obvious metaphor—his keeping a literal gulf between us, my readily meeting him each night. No wonder I’d gotten so confused. He’d been keeping careful boundaries and I’d been ignoring them.”

January is trying to rationalize her pain at finding out Gus is married. She is hurt he hasn’t told her and really believed they had grown close enough for such a thing to come up. She is searching for signs that she’s misread Gus’s intentions or jumped ahead with her feelings for him. As a writer, she is good at acknowledging metaphors in her life and finds the space between their decks to be a perfectly suitable metaphor for the space Gus has intentionally kept between them.

“I knew he wasn’t writing to save lives so much as to understand what had destroyed them.”

As Gus interviews Dave, January observes how Gus interacts with people and listens to the things he tells Dave about how the cult will be presented in the book. She sees a side of Gus that is empathetic as Gus reassures Dave that the book is not as important as Dave’s emotional state. This interaction puts Gus’s writing in perspective for January as she realizes Gus means to do no harm with his exploration of life’s darkness.

“Gus has been married. Gus is divorced. That was why he was so sure love could never last, and he’d told me none of these key details, because he hadn’t really let me in.”

Multiple times throughout the few chapters following the revelation, January repeats to herself that Gus has been married, as if to remind herself that Gus is capable of everlasting love. She struggles to wrap her mind around the idea of Gus committing himself to someone, both out of anger that he neglected to tell her and out of jealousy that someone could capture Gus’s heart. January rationalizes that he must not have told her because he never really cared about her in the first place.

“I didn’t want to feel these things. It wasn’t fun anymore, now that I was thinking it all through, where it would end up—with me attached and jealous and him having shared about as much about his life with me as you might with a hairdresser.”

During their line-dancing date, January becomes increasingly emotional. His omission of the fact that he was married hurts her to her core, and she harbors regret for letting herself develop feelings for him. Despite predicting that Gus would hurt her, she’s genuinely surprised that he left such an important piece of information out of their conversations. She’s upset that she’s let herself grow so close to him in light of this revelation.

“‘Cheers,’ he said, lifting his. ‘To what?’ I asked. He smirked. ‘To your happy endings.’ I’d thought we were friends, that he respected me, and now I felt like he was calling me a fairy princess all over again, laughing to himself about how naive and silly my worldview was, holding his failed marriage like a secret trump card that proved, once again, he knew more than me.”

At the line-dancing bar, Gus tries to toast to happy endings, unaware that January knows about his marriage. She takes his toast as a dig at her worldview and believes he’s secretly laughing at her naivety. January worries that Gus is just waiting for the right opportunity to hold his failed marriage over her head and force her to admit the world isn’t full of love.

“Sure, he wasn’t a bright light, but he wasn’t the cynic I’d thought, either. He was a realist who was a little too afraid of hope to see things clearly when it came to his own life.”

January is coming to the realization that Gus’s personality is much deeper than she originally thought. As they discuss their past relationships on Gus’s front porch, January sees Gus in a new light. With him opening up to her, she must adjust her perception of him from a bleak cynic to a cautious realist.

“He wasn’t afraid for things to get ugly, to see someone at their weakest, and he didn’t fall over himself trying to talk me out of my own feelings. He just witnessed them, and somehow, that let them finally get out of my body after years of imprisonment.”

After their interviews with Dave and Grace, January develops a deeper understanding for the way Gus deals with people. She appreciates that he is there to allow others to feel negative things, which is a sharp contrast from how Jacques used to handle January’s negative emotions. January is finally feeling free of her pent-up emotional baggage because Gus allows her to let it out.

“‘You don’t know the difference between pity and sympathy,’ I said. ‘I’m not pitying you. It makes me sad to think of you being treated like that. It makes me mad to think you didn’t have the things all kids deserve. And yeah, it makes me mad and sad that a lot of people go through the things you went through, but it’s even more upsetting because it’s you. And I know you and I like you and I want you to have a good life. That’s not pity. That’s caring about someone.’”

As Gus and January walk along the beach, Gus talks more about his childhood and his abusive dad. January tries to sympathize and comfort Gus, but he reacts negatively. Here, January asserts her stance to Gus, hoping he won’t feel patronized by her sympathy and explaining that she isn’t out to pity him. She also confesses to liking him these feelings to him directly.

“You’re the bright light!”

Gus is in the midst of explaining to January why he values her worldview. He is referencing his earlier comparison of his mother to a bright light and his father to a black hole. He wants January to know he sees her as a bright light as well and values the light she brings to his world.

“We’d let so much out into the open over the last three days, and I knew more would bubble up over time, but for the first time in a year, I didn’t feel overstuffed with trapped emotions and bitten-back words.”

After coming to terms with their feelings for one another and having deeper discussions about their lives, their writing, and their worldviews, January and Gus are finally in a good place where they understand one another’s feelings and desires. For the first time since their courtship began, January is not feeling anxious or overwhelmed by her negative emotions. She knows where she stands with Gus and feels safe and comfortable letting herself feel for him.

“We were playing a game: how far can we go without admitting we’ve gone?”

At this point, January and Gus have only kissed briefly in the car. They’ve had plenty of physical contact, however, and January is worried that they’re going to give in to their urges soon. She makes this observation while Gus is holding her hips, rocking with her gently while they look at Gus’s yearbook after a brief bout of wrestling. January knows that if they keep up this physical contact, they’ll eventually proceed to more intimacy.

“When it came down to it, I knew exactly who Gus Everett was, and it didn’t change a thing. Because even though he would probably never learn to dance in the rain, it was Gus I wanted. Only Gus. Exactly Gus.”

This observation of January’s takes place at Pete’s Fourth of July cookout, just hours after she and Gus have sex for the first time. Gus has been acting strange since his phone call, and January worries about his distant moodiness. At this point, she is trying to assure herself that she knows Gus now and has nothing to worry about. She knows she wants him and is willing to accept whatever baggage comes with him.

“‘Please, January,’ Gus said quietly, and it was the please that unraveled me. What was I doing? I cared about Gus, but if he didn’t want me to hold on to him, I had to let go.”

During their trip to the site of New Eden, Gus has continued to act distant. He asks January over and over again if she’s sure she wants to be there with him. Despite her insistence that she does, Gus finally begs her to go back to the tent and let him finish this research alone. January is heartbroken. She doesn’t understand why he’s distancing himself from her again, but she realizes that she needs to respect his wishes and let him be alone if that’s what he wants.

“Gus still thought he was missing something, some special piece other people had, the thing that made people stay, and it broke my heart a little.”

Shortly after Gus admits to January that he’s wanted her since college, he tells her that he’s afraid of being a phase for her. He believes January is only interested in him because she’s going through a dark time in her life and that once she’s found herself again, she’ll leave him. He says this is why he’s been so distant. January realizes that Gus is used to rejection and believes it’s a problem within himself.

“And I felt a little more like the January of before too, the one who could fall fearlessly.”

After January and Gus reconcile in the tent, they take their relationship to another level both physically and emotionally. During their long adventure home, through diners, bars, and bookstores, January starts to acknowledge the part of herself that she’s been missing since her dad died. She feels happy and ready to let herself fall in love with Gus.

“Because the truth was, learning the truth about my dad had made the world seem dark and unfamiliar, but discovering Gus bit by bit had done the opposite.”

January is analyzing how far she’s come over the summer as she’s fallen for Gus. She realizes that Gus brings out a good side of her, despite their opposing personalities. She wants to continue to learn about Gus and grow with him as she overcomes her emotional baggage.

“I wanted to hate her. I did hate her, and I also felt her pain mixing with mine. I felt all of the excitement of a new love, a healing one, a second chance with someone you’d almost forgotten about. And the pain when their real life came to call, the agony of knowing there was history with someone else, a relationship yours couldn’t touch.”

January is finally face to face with Sonya—an interaction she’s been dreading since moving to North Bear Shores. As much as she wants to maintain the resentment she’s felt towards Sonya since the beginning of the book, January can’t help but empathize with Sonya’s story. Sonya’s relationship with January’s dad mirrors January’s relationship with Gus in ways that makes January uncomfortable and emotional.