67 pages • 2 hours read
Emily HenryBeach Read
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2020A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 11-13Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 11 Summary: “The Not Date”
January spends the next day ruminating over what kind of romantic adventure she’ll take Gus on. She visits the farmer’s market and recalls living with Jacques and cooking together, remarking on how romantic the act of sharing a kitchen is. She thinks about how characters can fall in love anywhere and how it takes one sparking moment to define a book. Though she doesn’t feel the same sweeping excitement to write after her interview with Grace, January feels a small spark of that inspiration she used to have. Now, it is her goal to give Gus that same inspiration for romance.
When she gets home from the farmer’s market, she decides to clean out the upstairs bathroom, packing up boxes of towels and toiletries and taking them to her car to eventually take for donation. On her way back inside, she spots Gus through her window, holding up another notebook sign quoting Romeo and Juliet’s “WHEREFORE ART THOU” line at her (111). January feels butterflies despite acknowledging that it’s a joke. She writes back, “New phone who dis?” (112), causing Gus to laugh.
When she is done taking boxes to her car, she pours some wine and steps out on her deck to enjoy the weather. January thinks about her mother’s chemotherapy and how she felt like she had to hide her heartbreak at the illness and at all the opportunities, schooling, and travel that she turned down after college because of it. She pushed down those negative feelings to stay strong for so long that when she found out about Sonya, everything spilled out.
Gus interrupts her thoughts, asking her what he should wear for the evening. January jokingly asks if he has a tuxedo, and Gus confesses that he does. She tells him his “grumpy bartender costume should do” (115), referring to his always-rumpled clothing.
January takes him to a small carnival in a parking lot. They each pay for their own ride passes and spend their time discussing characters, romance, and plots. They get on the topic of January’s relationships in college, and January reveal details about her relationship with Jacques to the reader. Their romance began during a snowball fight. She strove to be adventurous and spontaneous. They did romantic things together, bought romantic gifts for one another, and traveled to romantic places together. January strove to be the perfect love story for Jacques. He fit in perfectly with her idealized version of romance, but it all came to an end when January’s dad died. She could no longer maintain the positive, spontaneous, happy persona she’d put on for him for years, and Jacques couldn’t deal with her depressed sad state. She regrets the time she let him waste with her while she pretended to be perfect for him.
Gus buys cotton candy for them to share, and they continue to walk the carnival, creating imaginary stories for the people they see and discussing their craft. While Gus creates dark, gritty stories, January imagines happy endings for the people they observe. Finally, January convinces Gus to join her on the Ferris wheel.
Chapter 12 Summary: “The Olive Garden”
January ends up vomiting from a ride, and Gus holds her hair until he almost vomits himself and runs off. January is amused by his aversion to vomiting. On the ride home, January reveals that her parents met at a carnival, at a fortune-telling machine. When Gus pries her for more information, she finally tells him about her dad’s infidelity. Gus makes a negative remark about infidelity, to which January rebuffs with the fact that he doesn’t believe in dating. He says that fidelity was never a problem. January points out his short relationships, and he asserts that he “dated Tessa Armstrong for a month” (128). January points out that they had their night at the frat party while he was with Tessa, and Gus confesses that he broke up with her that night, at the party. When January asks why, he responds with “Why do you think, January?” (129), and she blushes at the idea.
She doesn’t press the topic further, and he shifts the conversation back to her parents, explaining that her dedication to her parents in her first book was really beautiful. He tells January some vague details about his own childhood: how his mom protected him from his dad before he died, how he had a bag packed and fantasized that they’d one day get away from his dad to live in a treehouse, and finally how his mom died before they ever got away. This is why he’s so focused on the cult plot—because he wants to know what makes people stay in bad situations no matter the cost.
When she gets home, January orders a copy of Gus’s book and works on dissecting it. She makes progress in her story, changing the characters to early-20th-century circus performers and giving them all specific details and secrets that reflect her family’s secrets. Throughout the week, she and Gus continue to exchange words through notebooks held up to windows; some are serious concepts while others are jokes about quitting writing. They also spend time on their decks, sometimes conversing and sometimes just enjoying the air together.
That Friday, they head to Olive Garden to interview another person tied to the cult, Dave. Dave was a child when he was in the cult, and his mom left with him shortly before the whole thing burned down. Dave’s dad died in the fire. Dave is a recovering alcoholic, so January and Gus do not order drinks. They wait in the booth for over an hour before Gus decides that Dave isn’t coming. They order fancy frozen blue drinks and talk about their childhoods, bumping knees under the table. Gus eventually holds January’s hand under the table and only pulls away when the check comes, and he volunteers to pay.
Chapter 13 Summary: “The Dream”
Chapter 13 is a single line: “I DREAMED ABOUT GUS Everett and woke up needing a shower” (145).
Chapters 11-13 Analysis
Chapters 11 and 12 see January and Gus go on two unofficial dates, the first being a mock-date to the carnival, and the second being an unintentional night alone at Olive Garden. Despite the lack of intention, their relationship develops in very real ways.
As writers, they vibe at the carnival, bouncing ideas back and forth and making up stories about the people they observe. The reader gets key insight into how both Gus and January develop their characters and stories, showing the distinct contrast in their writing styles and, subsequently, their outlooks on life. While grittier stories with bitter conclusions flow naturally out of Gus’s head, January finds ways to counter every negative plot point from Gus with a positive conclusion, emphasizing the idea that they are foils to one another. Instead of their prior shallow banter, their back-and-forth has evolved to focus on their shared craft.
When January divulges the details of her relationship with Jacques and how it ended, the reader gets more insight into how January’s romantic worldview affected her interactions with people prior to her dad’s death. Because Jacques fit her perfect vision of romance, she changed herself to fit his: “He fit so perfectly into the love story I’d imagined for myself that I mistook him for the love of my life” (119). However, when she couldn’t keep up the persona after her dad’s death, she had to come to terms with the fact that she wasn’t the perfect person she wanted to be for Jacques. The January the reader meets at the beginning of the novel is January coming to terms with her perfect world crashing down. Not only was she unable to make her own seemingly perfect love story end in a happily-ever-after, but the seemingly perfect love story of her parents had also been a lie.
Once again, the car acts as a vehicle for their closeness, and they share another deeply personal conversation on the way home from the carnival. January reveals that her parents met at a carnival, explaining her choice for the night’s mock-date. She tells the story of their first encounter as though it were pulled from one of her books. In a way, this is how she had always seen her parents: two perfectly matched lovers with a perfect romance. It is only after Gus pries that she reveals her dad’s infidelity.
The fidelity conversation leads Gus to the startling confession that he broke up with his girlfriend while at the frat party with January. While the two don’t stay on the topic long, he implies that his intimate dancing with January was the reason for this breakup. January’s attraction to him is now undeniable, but she contains herself around him, either because she is responding to his pointed remarks about not falling in love with him or because she is still feeling disenchanted by love and relationships.
Their next weekend at Olive Garden plays out like another date. Gus has made several indications of his interest in January prior to this night, but nothing as definitive as taking her hand, even if neither of them vocally acknowledges the act. Finally, the single sentence that is Chapter 13 shows just how much Gus has gotten into January’s head. She is thinking about him enough to dream of him. The included detail that she needed a shower implies the steamy nature of the dream, though January does not elaborate.
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By Emily Henry
