She writes happily-ever-afters and he writes angsty "deep" fiction. Surely, they have nothing in common. When family secrets send January to her late father's beach house in a tiny town in Michigan, she doesn't expect to recognize the next door neighbor from her college writing classes. They strike a deal to help each other out of writer's block, and, you guessed it, fall in love. But not without confronting past demons that have scarred them both deeply. So vulnerable and aware, as each of them realize that they're worthy of love and find it in one another. - Genay
— Genay
“What do you get when you cross a disillusioned romance author with a Hemingway wannabe? A compulsively readable book where you kind of hope for your train to be delayed so you can spend a few more minutes with January and Gus. These two, saddled with writer’s block, make a pact to write the other’s genre. Literary snobbery is (rightfully) called out, and the two begin to navigate a friendship outside of writing as they explore the other’s process. Reader, I loved it.”
— Audrey Huang, Belmont Books, Belmont, MA
FROM THE #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF PEOPLE WE MEET ON VACATION AND BOOK LOVERS
A romance writer who no longer believes in love and a literary writer stuck in a rut engage in a summer-long challenge that may just upend everything they believe about happily ever afters.
Augustus Everett is an acclaimed author of literary fiction. January Andrews writes bestselling romance. When she pens a happily ever after, he kills off his entire cast.
They're polar opposites.
In fact, the only thing they have in common is that for the next three months, they're living in neighboring beach houses, broke, and bogged down with writer's block.
Until, one hazy evening, one thing leads to another and they strike a deal designed to force them out of their creative ruts: Augustus will spend the summer writing something happy, and January will pen the next Great American Novel. She'll take him on field trips worthy of any rom-com montage, and he'll take her to interview surviving members of a backwoods death cult (obviously). Everyone will finish a book and no one will fall in love. Really.