3.75 stars

Listen. I *love* Emily Henry. Her writing and characters are so comforting to me and can make me forget that I'm even reading. She's such an auto-buy author for me - I was so desperate to get my hands on this.

Great Big Beautiful Life follows sunshine-embodied journalist Alice and grumpy Hayden. They're both competing to write the biography of socialite Margaret Ives, who has been missing from the public eye for decades and is incredibly misunderstood. As Alice and Hayden unravel Margaret's tumultuous life and loves, they grow inevitably closer, which can only end badly when there's only one position to write the final book.

It has echoes of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, and really dives into Margaret's life and complicated family history. I also had the last great american dynasty in my head for most of the book.

Margaret's life was fascinating and heart-breaking to read, but to the point that the romance felt pretty secondary in comparison. I didn't buy into Alice and Hayden's story, and was much more interested in the flashbacks. Their connection felt quite forced and rushed compared to the well-fleshed-out biography chapters, and I found both of their personalities quite... bland? (I'm so sorry). I just needed more from both of them.

Saying all this, it did really pick up for me at the end, and I found the final 50 or so pages to be really bittersweet and satisfying. I had the typical warm-glowy-ball-in-my-chest moment that I always get with EmHen books. This might be her most touching and heartfelt book so far.

This one was just missing the spark and connection I usually get when reading an Emily Henry. I wasn't kicking my feet :( BUT! We love her for trying something new! Just because this one wasn't for me, doesn't mean it was bad or that everyone else won't love it :)

What it is like to live in the eye of the media. When your family is fêted by the great and glorious as well as the press.
From humble beginnings 3 generations ago. Double crosses, fueds, affairs and love.
Leaving the limelight behind 20years ago but tracked down by a determined journalist. Eventually asking 2 journalists to audition for the chance to write her life story, including family history.
Is the choice as random as it first seems or is throwing them together a strategy.
A book that will keep you guessing, feeling and turning the page as you are gripped by the story.

Definitely not my favourite Em Hen book but enjoyable all the same. I found it a bit harder to be invested in just because it took quite a lot of time to unveil the backstory of Margaret as one of the main hooks throughout the book and therefore you spend less time actively developing the main characters' relationship. It did feel like they went from 0 to 100 a bit too quick for me and it missed some of the relationship development for a romance book. It was cute though and a very quick and cosy read as you'd expect from an Em Hen book and one within this genre.

I love Emily Henry's books and writing and this book just confirms that one more time.

This is the kind of book that after you finish it, you need a moment or two to get your bearings and return to reality because it felt so real.

Alice and Hayden are both journalists that want to write the biography of the media princess, heiress of one of the biggest newspaper's companies and a woman that was so much part of the tabloid for what she did, and for everything she didn't. Her fame reached a new level after her marriage to the famous rock n' roll musician making all the people either love or hate, or more often that not, love to hate her.

The two writers have to compete to get the deal of the year, they can't talk to anyone about the details that Margaret shares but they especially can't talk about them to each other.

But staying on a small island means that they stumbled in the same places quite often, which leads to them becaming friends with a chemistry that is making it difficult to stay just friends.

We see both the romance develop from animosity to friends to lovers and at the same time Margaret's life and how she came to be, from the start of her family's media empire up until the end, when she disappeared for 20 years without a trace.

The change between past and present felt flawless, keeping me interested about both timelines at the same time.

The characters felt all so real and the pull this book had on me was so big that I actually had to pace myself because I didn't want it to end too soon, spoiler alert it was still too soon.

The star of the book was the romance between Alice and Hayden and what a phenomenal romance that was! They gradually go from strangers to more, even though they tried to keep their distance since they know what is at stake here but thankfully they come to realize that what they have isn't something you can stop. I simply adored how they opened up to each other and became each others confidant. They are an amazing couple that fell hard and I couldn't be happier with the way their story ended.



* I received an ARC and this is my honest opinion.

Congratulations, Emily Henry! You’ve done it again!

“‘I want to write about love,’ I say. Bianca nods. ‘So do that. Write about love.’”

This book was a beautiful love story, and not just the story between Hayden and Alice, but the unexpected love stories. Between sisters, parents, relatives, and friends. The love flows out of every word, every sentence, and every action! I was genuinely blown away and grateful that I received this arc!
Hayden and Alice are adorable. They find each other unexpectedly and are drawn together, experiencing a once-in-a-lifetime love. I swooned at every single moment. I expected nothing less from Ms. Henry.

“‘It’s yours,’ he offers.
I laugh. ‘Oh, I can have the world?’
‘Mine,’ he says, ‘yeah. You can have mine.’”

The intertwined story and mystery of Ms. Ives, the love between Laura and Margaret, really steals the show for me. When everything clicked, my jaw was on the floor! Overall, amazing book, amazing story, and amazing characters! I need a physical copy on my shelf right now!

Also, the end! Wink to the title. I cheered

Emily Henry fangirl gives 5 stars to her books? How shocking. But I just can’t rate them lower. How? I laughed so much, I cried too much (we’ll call it therapeutic, ok?), I wished the world in the book existed and that I could be a part of it… Books can be good, and “Great Big Beautiful Life” is very good, and I’ll give them high ratings because they’re deserved. But when a book influences my emotions in this way and brightens up my days so much? Impossible to rate it lower than 5 stars.
Being back into one of Emily Henry's books just feels like going back somewhere you've been happy before. I'm happy reading her books.

I went into this book knowing just very basic facts about it. Two writers fighting to be the one who writes a famous woman’s biography. Ok, I’m interested…but then it was so much more than that. As always. That’s one of the things that makes me love Emily Henry so much. The books have romance in them and I love the romance but they’re also about so many other things. Every single plot includes all these different subplots that affect the main characters, the secondary characters or all of them at once. And that adds more complexity to the story.
When I first started to understand the personalities given to Alice and Hayden in this story, I thought people would call it “grumpy/sunshine”. For me, it reads more as someone who's a dreamer and someone more realistic. The banter, flirty or not, was as good as always. I love the witty and quirky aspect of Emily's characters and really wish I was more like that.
There's always some talk about tropes and trying to change them a bit. This time, it was one I appreciate a lot. Alice is tall, literally as tall as I am, and her jokes about height and Hayden and past partners he had made me laugh so much. I know there was a tall and short dynamic in People we meet on vacation, but that book’s banter didn't make it feel like a trope. They just happened to be tall and short. As a tall woman, I appreciate characters like Alice or Nora from Book Lovers and the commentary about height. And I'm not the only one.

I really enjoyed the way Margaret’s story was added into the book. And mostly how it connected with the rest of the plots. This book is very much about feeling like you aren't good enough, not fitting in or finding your place in a professional sense, not being really seen for who you are but seeing how others have a perception of you that isn't true. It's a lot about family and family dynamics that can be tricky sometimes. I really related with how both Hayden and Alice felt when it came to these different things. There's a quote that Alice says very close to the end of the book that broke me. That's when I sobbed. And it was a similar reaction to something Nora told Charlie in Book Lovers. I feel a lot of people will feel similarly when reading those words and realising that's how they feel as well. And seeing how different people with similar issues react so differently to them is also very interesting as a character study.

There was some mystery in the book because we keep on learning about Margaret and there are so many questions about her life. I thought I was speculating a lot about it because I love mystery thrillers and I just try to find mysteries everywhere. But Alice pointed out that's typical journalist behaviour so I guess it's a bit of both.
Margaret’s family story was so interesting too.

Another reason why I love Emily Henry's books, and I might have mentioned this in past reviews, is that the characters are older than your usual romance book. Mind you, still early/mid thirties but that's me so I enjoy how that adds some maturity to the stories. Nothing wrong with reading about younger people but a lot of those stories can feel a bit too young for me personally. Also, just talking about this book, the “conflict” (there's probably a better word to describe it) for the romance part felt realistic too. It's something that could happen to us not literally but a similar problem at another job. So that realism (because I'm more Hayden than I'm Alice) is appreciated. It elevates the story for me.

Every single Emily Henry book I've read has been a massive success for me. So, as I always say, I'll be patiently waiting for the next one.

"I think you live in a world that's more interesting than the one most people live in," he says, and just as my heart starts to sink with disappointment, with a kind of loneliness, he adds, "and I wish I could live in it too."
I feel myself beaming. "I'll take you sometime."
"I'd like that," he says.

This book is everything I truly love about stories. It has amazing characters who are complex and they unravel as the book progresses.

There are moments of sheer beauty that made me grateful to live this life and want to go out and DO SOMETHING BIG. The setting is gorgeous and perfect to get lost in. The romance is heartfelt and sweet - I adored how Alice and Hayden's personality's were completely juxtaposed but together they made perfect sense. I also adored the enigmatic Margaret, and how her story unfolded alongside Alice and Hayden's and truly kept me guessing until the final and bittersweet end.

I could have lived in this story forever, I was heartbroken to finish it but truly I loved it so much.

Emily Henry never ever lets me down, her books are a cup of tea and a warm blanket to curl up in after a long day.

“But the problem is, once you love someone, you can’t have it all anymore. Love comes with sacrifice. That’s how it works.”

A great, big beautiful story by Emily Henry.

This was unlike any of Emily’s recent novels and in the best possible way. A family saga with mystery and suspense but in true Emily Henry style the story is, at its core, about love, both platonic and romantic.

The story flows so well and is so beautifully and well written. The story within the story is captivating and addictive and I couldn’t put it down.

My only criticism is that I thought the ending felt quite rushed but the story felt complete so I can’t really complain.

Henry fans will not be disappointed!

Thank you SO MUCH to the publishers and NetGalley for this digital arc.

Emily Henry's Great Big Beautiful Life is everything and more. It holds more than Emily Henry's normal phenomenal writing style. One might even say an element of mystery. The balance between Alice and Hadyen's real life in a small-town island in Georgia juxtaposed with Margaret Ives's family history makes for a compelling read for both romance lovers and fiction (or even perhaps historical fiction) lovers too. There have been rumors to Taylor Swift's The Last Great American Dynasty from the title, but other than sharing the word great, Henry's doesn't seem to be the same kind of story (Rebecca threw major parties, and Margaret moreso attended parties). Love a good tie-in to the title at the end (not saying more than that because no spoilers). There are definitely similarities to The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo (but better!). This might be Emily's best book yet. We definitely need to re-read it soon. Perfection.

I always wonder if there'll be an EmHen book that I don't like, but once again she has knocked it out of the park with this one. It took me a little while to get into because of *life* but once I was in deep I absolutely loved it. It was different to her others yet so familiar at the same time. I can't wait to give this a re-read as soon as it's out!

This book is BEAUTIFUL. Like genuinely, heart-wrenchingly incredible. Favourite Emily Henry book to date (which I say about all of them, but THIS ONE, gosh).

I fell in love with the characters. We had two stories worth of characters in the one book, and I was completely invested in all of them. Alice and Hayden are both so flawed, which makes them perfect. Perfect to relate to, and perfect for each other. Margaret is a bit difficult to like, but as the pieces start unravelling and we learn more and more, you don't just like her, you also understand her.

There's some romance mixed amongst the story, but it isn't the main focus. The romance more lends towards the understanding of how we'd do anything for those that we love, which ties into Margaret's story as well.

This book is just beautiful, and I know this is one that will stay with me.

A very big thank you to Penguin and Viking for providing me with an eARC.

Emily Henry does it again! Another romance novel full of the swoon-factor as well as reflections on life, family relationships, finding your calling and the perpetual feeling of being on holiday - how does she do that? This one adds an intriguing story of glamour, fame and tragedy woven through it, to it's heart-wrenching ending. I loved Alice and the portrayal of her relationship with Hayden as they fell for each other. It did feel like the ending was quite sudden but possibly, I just didn't want it to end. I would also have loved having Hayden's point of view but that would have taken away some of the mystery element from them not being able to discuss their respective time with Margaret. I didn't need the ticking clock of their allotted month with her to keep me turning pages, but it definitely added to the feeling of stakes being raised, particularly as they fell harder for each other. Another wonderful book!

Emily Henry has done it again. I have JUST finished the book, and the last couple of chapters were so Emily-Henryesque that I have to write this all down RIGHT AWAY.

First of all, to answer the long-awaited question: yes, this book is different from the other EH books. There are two parallel stories to follow, with a solid mix of mystery and romance, and often the stories are literary fiction-adjacent. The good news is that it's all delightful. This quality of EH books doesn't change: it's a pageturner, endearing characters you immediately root for, and the payoff for the reader is enormous towards the end, with callbacks aplenty.

In many ways, I also think Great Big Beautiful Life had the most realistic characters. And that these characters drive the plot so beautifully. Their dilemmas were realistic, too. Hayden and Alice are very likeable MCs...their quirks and idiosyncrasies believable, their life trajectories sensible. (Did I smell a Grumpy x Sunshine trope? Maybe)

On the parallel, we had the story of Margaret Ives, former Tabloid Princess who is now living a life of obscurity. We are taken through her story in her own words — which begs the question, is she an unreliable narrator? — and the story spans at least 3 generations before her. (It was reminiscent of Nathan Hill's Wellness and the history of Elizabeth's family we were told there, except this was a celebrity in the public eye, similar to Taylor Jenkins Reid's Evelyn Hugo)

When you're reading the last act, go with an open mind: the romance genre tropes make things slightly predictable, but the literary and celebrity fabric demands you to read between the lines. I am glad EH ventured into this form of writing; it is a very heartwarming story, even when there's a certain chance that the reader's guesses and the easter eggs decryption land in the vicinity of — if not on — the big reveal).

If you enjoy Taylor Jenkins Reid's novels and Taylor Swift's music, you are in for a treat. If you've been an Emily Henry fan (without these two other things added to the mix) be a good egg and join in as she takes us on a multi-genre journey, adding a dash of mystery to her romance outfit.

"God, Alice, we'd be so good together."

Rating: 4.25/5

- small town
- grumpy (him) x sunshine (her)
- rival journalists to lovers
- slow burn
- 🌶️.5/5
- single pov

Premise: You and a rival journalist have one month to start writing a book on an elusive ex-socialite.

This is something unique from Emily Henry. While it isn't a new favourite, I still enjoyed diving deep into the mystery of Margaret's iconic family. Told through interviews and story excerpts, this storyline sometimes takes precedence over the romance.

"What do you do when you live in a world that was built around you, and so you find yourself trapped, like one sentence in a myth, one brick in a wall, when you're built into the fabric of a place and that place was built to keep everyone out?"

For me, the romance is a subplot. Alice is sunshine and optimism personified, juxtaposed perfectly with Hayden's grumpiness. It's definitely a slow burn, but things pick up around the 40% mark.

There's a lot of tension as they struggle to keep it platonic and not mention Margaret for the month they're essentially competing against each other. There's also a beautiful undertone of trust and vulnerability, as they slowly open up to one another.

"I think you live in a world that's more interesting than the one most people live in, and I wish I could live in it too." >>> the way he sees her 🥹.

Emily loves a complex family dynamic and this is no exception. Another subplot weaving its way through the story is Alice's grief journey after losing her dad years ago and her fragile relationship with her mother.

I love the plot twists at the end of Margaret's story, although the ending stressed me, with so much to be resolved in such a short time. It felt a little rushed. But overall, I know EmHen fans will eat up this new offering of hers.

Thank you to Viking Books UK for the early copy!

Alice & Hayden are rival writers that are competing with the chance to write a biography of the elusive Margret Ives, the old Hollywood media heiress, and finally tell the true story of her larger than life family.
Hayden & Alice have a month to impress Margret & gain her trust to be selected in winning this career defining job, but is Margret the one who can be trusted? With an NDA stopping the two writers being able to discuss their conflicting sessions, Alice & Hayden are torn between finding the truth about the Ives family and keeping their dream job.

I absolutely loved this book but I’m not the first to say that this one feels slightly different to her previous books, but please don’t let that put you off! It still has the EmHen romance magic that we all love but there is a deep storyline too that really captured my heart.

The yearning of Alice & Hayden was perfect but for me it was the chunks of Margaret’s story that had me captivated. I always hate to compare but if you liked the sweeping story and vivid characters of Evelyn Hugo you will love this!

I loved the way she seamlessly wove the romance between Alice & Hayden between such a big family history plot, I was unsure if one would out do the other at first, but when the slow burn finally peaked it was a treat, EmHen writes such great spice!

All in all it was a perfect book for me, more substance than a traditional romance but still all the romance tropes and scenes that I love too!
Have I found the contender for book of the year already?? I think so!

Emily Henry does not miss! Both the stories in this novel - Alice and Hayden's love story, and Margaret's life story - captivated me, keeping me hooked and unable to put the book down. There are comparisons to be made to Taylor Jenkins Reid in terms of the formatting and the celebrity tell-all memoir plot, which certainly isn't a bad thing. With the additional premise that the two writers must compete for the chance to win the opportunity to write the memoir, and where each of them are only being told parts of the story, Emily Henry gives a new perspective to the trope. The novel also contains a lovely exploration of grief and a complicated mother-daughter relationship. Overall, I loved this one a lot and am happy to see Emily remaining consistent in her work!

Just when I think the last Emily Henry book was my favourite, she comes out with another one even better!

I loved Alice and Hayden's story. The setting of a small town, without meeting too many characters, was lovely and it really allowed us the space to get to know Alice and Hayden. They're thrown together when a they're both in the running to write maybe the best book they'll ever write and although they should be against one another, they keep finding themselves together.

Not only did I enjoy the romance aspect of it, and the slower timeline made it realistic, what I really loved was hearing Margaret's story. Getting to hear about her past, how her family started and all of the things they'd been through was so interesting.

Great Big Beautiful Life had so much going for it. Romance, humour, mystery. What's not to love.

I loved Great Big Beautiful Life, a story about two writers trying to get an heiress to choose them to write her life story. Alice and Hayden were great characters, highly recommend.

Always a fan of an EmHen! This is the perfect summer read. Focused on two writers, it is great for anyone thinking being a writer is their dream career - fun to live through Alice and Hayden!

Easy 5 star read, definitely recommend.

Two writers battle it out to get the biography scoop of a lifetime: the infamous story of Margaret Ives. An heiress the media loved to hate.

Split in two timelines, this novel follows journalist Alice as she spends time in Georgia getting to understand the life and story of Margaret, and then Alice telling Margaret’s story.

Both storylines are about more than just romance, but the love of family and security of (or lack thereof) of just trying to be yourself.

Fans of Evelyn Hugo or Daisy Jones and the six will enjoy this. It has very TJR vibes.

Personally, I would’ve like more Alice and Hayden as they were my faves and their romance was just classic EH!

This book will make perfect summer beach reading!

Thank you Penguin Random House for the ARC.