Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry Review

Two writers compete for the chance to tell the larger-than-life story of a woman with more than a couple of plot twists up her sleeve in this dazzling and sweeping new novel from Emily Henry.

Alice Scott is an eternal optimist still dreaming of her big writing break. Hayden Anderson is a Pulitzer-prize winning human thundercloud. And they’re both on balmy Little Crescent Island for the same reason: To write the biography of a woman no one has seen in years—or at least to meet with the octogenarian who claims to be the Margaret Ives. Tragic heiress, former tabloid princess, and daughter of one of the most storied (and scandalous) families of the 20th Century.
 

When Margaret invites them both for a one-month trial period, after which she’ll choose the person who’ll tell her story, there are three things keeping Alice’s head in the game.
 

One: Alice genuinely likes people, which means people usually like Alice—and she has a whole month to win the legendary woman over.
 

Two: She’s ready for this job and the chance to impress her perennially unimpressed family with a Serious Publication.
 

Three: Hayden Anderson, who should have no reason to be concerned about losing this book, is glowering at her in a shaken-to-the core way that suggests he sees her as competition.
 

But the problem is, Margaret is only giving each of them pieces of her story. Pieces they can’t swap to put together because of an ironclad NDA and an inconvenient yearning pulsing between them every time they’re in the same room.
 

And it’s becoming abundantly clear that their story—just like the tale Margaret’s spinning—could be a mystery, tragedy, or love ballad…depending on who’s telling it.

In recent years, the romance genre has become known for primarily two types of romance stories: one that is full of romcom fun hijinks and one that is a steamy, passionate “will they won’t they”. Emily Henry’s Great Big Beautiful Life doesn’t follow either formula and in many ways goes in an entirely different direction from most recent trending booktok/influencer. Readers expecting a one on one, passionate and sexy romance drama focusing on its lead characters Alice and Hayden are going to be caught off-guard or disappointed; just look at some of the top-rated Goodreads and book influencer reviews and you’ll know what I mean. However different is certainly not bad and for more veteran or mature readers that have been reading romance novels for a while, Great Big Beautiful Life feels like a callback to an earlier time where the genre had more of a drama and women/contemporary fiction element beyond the heat. While this novel follows Henry’s signature style and tone at a surface level, Great Big Beautiful Life’s theme of “love” goes far beyond Alice and Hayden’s expected meet-cute and instead thoughtfully reflects on the power of love and the things people will do and sacrifice for those they hold dear. This is not a simple competing writers love story, but also one that covers multiple generations; of love between siblings, parental love, and the painful sort of love of regret and grief for those that are no longer with us.

“He was the love of her life, and he let the world make him too small for her. “The world Freddy Ives lived in was built around him. There wasn’t room for her.” I swallow a knot. “What do you think he should have done?” She turns the full force of those shining blue eyes on me. “For the one you love? Anything. You unmake the world and build a new one. You do anything to give them what they need.”

When one picks up an Emily Henry adult romance novel, there’s a few things that instantly come to mind. There’s Henry’s thoughtful yet still modernly accessible prose, a healthy dose of drama and character growth, thirsty gazes and open-door bedroom scenes, and a writing-related element. Apart from Funny Story, whose literary connection was quite a stretch and Happy Place which largely lacked any writing element, all of Henry’s romance novels have revolved around some form of the publishing/writing industry. However, compared to past novels, Great Big Beautiful Life is her most writing-intensive story since her first adult novel Beach Read, and the two novels feature a lot of similarities. Both involve Alice/Hayden and June/Gus working on competing literary pieces and both plots heavily involve non-romance storylines involving family and grief. Oddly enough, the one negative point I had when reviewing Beach Read was wishing the story focused more on their writing process as well as experiencing both of their final published books. While Alice and Hayden are writing as a test pitch rather than a full book, this novel directly addresses my previous critique and heavily focuses on the highlighted premise. While I disagree with a few loud negative comments accusing Great Big Beautiful Life of being mis-genred and misleading, it’s crucial to check the synopsis to make sure it’s something interesting and worth reading. Unlike Henry’s past novels that were romance forward, around 60% of this novel is focused on the life of the once famous Margaret Ives and her family’s history that contributed to who she is today. Between interviews with Margaret, the writing process and competition with Hayden, as well as Alice’s own conflicted feelings with her own family, Alice’s own romance is largely absent in the book’s synopsis which is a clear indicator of what the reader will get when reading this book. If you’ve come only for Alice x Hayden romance and spice, you will most certainly be disappointed.

While Alice and Hayden have some meet-uncute > awkwardly cute moments that may or may not turn to love, Great Big Beautiful Life’s concept and theme of love is far more expansive and complex. As Alice is drawn into Maragaret’s world, both she and the reader experience both the power and burdens of love and the lengths people will go for others. Alice’s interviews with Margaret start over a hundred years ago with her great grandfather Lawrence Ives and over the course of several generations, certain recurring themes show up again and again. The pressure and toll public scrutiny has on each Ives, the overlooked curses that come with fame and riches, but perhaps the most notable one, the mistakes or sacrifices made alone the way. As Alice (and indirectly Hayden off the page) learns more and more about Margaret and her family, similar feelings and doubts involving her own family and Hayden leads her on her own personal journey in Henry’s expectedly relatable and well-written manner. While some of the themes are quite standard, Henry’s thoughtful and introspective reflections do wonders to enhance the material and to help carry the novel’s slower sections, most notably the first two generations of Ives. While I found the first half of the book to be interesting, albeit a bit slow, once the story gets to Margaret’s parents and her own generation, things pick up substantially and get a lot more interesting.

Taking place on an imaginary island off the coast of Georgia, when it’s not actively reliving the lives of the Ives as a contemporary drama, Great Big Beautiful Life is nearly as good of a tropical travel escapism read. With colorful visuals and the distinctly Georgia/Florida-esque casual island pace of life, the novel does a wonderful job at portraying the Georgia coast and marshlands, making this a perfect summer read (no doubt intentional given its May publication date). One of the notes I wrote down early-on was that this story’s setting and tone felt more of what I was expecting from People We Meet On Vacation on paper, even though Alice and Hayden are technically at Little Crescent Island for work rather than pleasure. The laid-back island lifestyle not only is a refreshingly different flavor for Henry’s novels (People We Meet On Vacation and Happy Place previously featured vacation locales but were nowhere near as distinctive as this novel) but also serves as an intentional foil to the hectic rush and excessive opulence of Margaret’s history. I personally found the fictional island to work really well with Alice and Hayden’s banter and interactions, and greatly preferred Great Big Beautiful Life’s portrayal and use of its setting compared to another Floridian-based romance novel I recently read.

Besides the intrigue behind Margaret’s life, additionally there’s light mystery elements that run beneath the romance and character drama storylines that add subtle interest. Why has Margaret agreed to a memoir about her life now after disappearing and off the grid for the last twenty years? Why is she open to talking about her family’s entire history yet cagey about her own life? And why does the competition between Alice and Hayden for her memoir feel off, like there’s a greater purpose beyond testing the waters and style of both writers. As a mystery reader, I loved these extra details beyond the simple romance and love concepts.

With so much going on with Margaret and her family’s history, there’s far less time and pages devoted solely to Alice and Hayden themselves, which is likely the biggest sticking point for most readers. I personally loved both characters and found their relationship dynamics to be quite different and far more subdued than Henry’s past couples. The synopsis portrays them as an optimistic dreamer and a grouchy thundercloud, but I would summarize them instead as more of a hopeful empath and a professionally guarded cynic. While Alice is certainly a heart on her sleeves optimist and Hayden is stormy grouch initially, the descriptor pigeonholes them into very standard and typical roles for the genre which doesn’t represent Henry’s more nuanced characterizations. While Alice is an upbeat and dreamy optimist, she’s not a pushover and that constant appealing and pleasant facade masks feelings of loneliness and “I am fine, this is fine”. Being social and people-pleasing can be a tough character to pull off without being saccharine, but she’s now one of my favorite upbeat FMC and it’s hard not to constantly root for her. Hayden on the other hand isn’t merely a professional grouch, but instead a hesitant and private person who just so happens to be tall, broad and handsome per the male romantic interest requirements. Although we technically spend less time with both due to the heavy focus on Marget’s history, I found myself enjoying them considerably and finding them more distinctive than other past couples (though I’m apparently in the minority on Hayden). Of note, the synopsis again is very particular with the word choice used that seems to be misinterpreted by many readers who aren’t paying attention. The trope is not a true rivals to lovers arc but instead is more of a strangers to lovers arc. The summary states, “two writers compete for a chance” and “Hayden is glowering at her in a way that suggests he sees her as competition”. See how both quotes suggest a competition on a professional front but not on a personal one? If you can even consider their start as enemies, the phase is very short and quickly moves towards lowkey caring and sweet.

“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.

While spicy one-liners and witty banter is all but expected from Henry, Alice and Hayden have a really great complementary relationship that’s both cozy and sophisticated. They reminded me of Poppy and Alex from People We Meet On Vacation but more mellow and mature. More importantly however, unlike Poppy and Alex or many of Henry’s past couples, it isn’t a “will they or won’t they” but instead a “when will they and how will they”. While there is an inevitable last-minute conflict, the separation is well executed through the story’s plot, not due to silly miscommunication nonsense typical for the genre. Their conflict and resolution are also deeply tied to the novel’s recurring themes of family relationships and sacrifices and just works really well.

While the novel has an impressively large scope and the story within the story element very ambitious, I did have a few minor personal nitpicks. Despite overall finding Great Beautiful Life to be very well done from a critical read/reviewing standpoint, I found myself losing interest in the Ives’s family history during the first two generations due to how slow and irrelevant they felt to Margaret’s story. The premise and synopsis highlight the larger-than-life story of Margaret but it doesn’t really mention how much of Margaret’s interviews involve her family history rather than herself. The Ives family history provides important context and framework to show how it influenced and affected Margart’s outlook on life but it’s unexpectedly long and often purposefully meandering per Margaret’s hidden prerogative. While the generations are pretty straightforward, there are a lot of names and people to remember and without a family tree to help keep things organized, it can sometimes be confusing on whose who, though I understand why a family tree wasn’t included as it would affect many of the plot twists and surprises.

While Alice’s adventures around Little Crescent Island and her meet-uncute moments with Hayden help carry the story, Margaret doesn’t show up in her own story until over the half-way mark, which seems to be an odd pacing choice. Having finished the novel, the earlier generations of Ives provide important context and introduce the novel’s recurring themes revolving around familial love necessary for the story’s resolution to have an emotional impact, but I wish it was more connected to Margaret rather than being so purposely vague to confuse both Alice and the reader. Once Marget’s own life itself gets going and she relives her childhood with her sister and her romance with the heartthrob rock singer Cosmo Sinclair (Henry’s recurring fictional Cosmo Sinclair song lyrics are great, there’s only about 25% of the book left and everything felt like it was going by so fast. Particularly the interviews about Margaret’s adult married life with Cosmo onward as well as the fallout that occurs once Alice realizes the secrets Margaret has been keeping from her and Hayden, this last section was incredibly compelling and well-written but so condensed. While far from being as messy and chaotic as Happy Place’s ending, I would’ve loved if Great Big Beautiful Life had another 30-40 pages or so in this final section, even more so if Alice’s resolutions with Margaret and her life had occurred on-page rather than recapped off-page.

While I fully understand that Margaret’s life was the focus and Alice largely serves as proxy for the reader learning about the lives of the Ives, I would’ve liked to see more of Alice and Hayden in the story considering they had such great chemistry. While Margaret’s interviews are meant to be compelling material, I often felt like her stories would interrupt the flow and interest of Alice and Hayden’s interactions rather than their relationship complimenting her story. Henry has a lot of great thematic parallels between Alice/Hayden and the Ives strained relationships and insecurities, but it’s a little disappointing how abbreviated and quick their overall romance is (likely the major issue for most of Henry’s past romance readers). Their shared time on the island, 24hr diner escapes, even trading coffee shop orders, they were romance novel perfection for me and surprisingly quite restrained for past dates and outings in Henry’s other books. And while I liked Hayden’s characterizations and subtle personality a lot, he had easily the least amount of on-page screen time of any of Henry’s male leads, though thankfully he does not have the least amount of character growth, that would be Wren from Happy Place. What Henry delivered is great and Alice/Hayden have some of the most understated, yet relatable dialogue compared to some of Henry’s more comedically wild or sharp lines, but I just wanted more!

Different in focus but far from being misguided or poor, Great Big Beautiful Life is unlike any of Emily Henry’s past adult romance novels. The first novel with a focus outside of the main romantic pair and the first to feature more mature characters and storylines, this novel may understandably not satisfy all of Henry’s passionate fanbase but is one that is refreshingly unique amongst her catalogue of works. Yet despite a subtle shift away from her usual formula, this is still an Emily Henry novel through and through and features the relatability and great character dialogue she’s known for. And while her past novels are well-written, there’s a greater sense of sophistication here and the plotting/reactions of the various Ives over the years, and their connection to Margaret, Alice and Hayden is great. In many ways this novel feels like the natural progression of an author expanding their boundaries without completely abandoning their past style (I consider this almost like a classed-up cousin of Beach Read).

I was on the fence whether to rate this 4 or 5 stars on Goodreads and other platforms that don’t have half point ratings, but I ultimately decided to round up due to how ridiculously dramatic some of the top-liked reviews for this book are and how they completely missed the point and details of the story. I was also impressed by Henry trying something different, as well as the quality and poignant human reflections that I feel just get better and better with every book she writes (except Happy Place, her only misfire for me so far). As previously mentioned, do read the synopsis well and honestly consider whether the premise of a writer learning about a past socialite’s life and history is interesting or not. If you are only interested in Alice and Hayden’s romance, it goes without saying you have been respectfully informed. However, if you’re a reader like me who enjoys more ambitiously crafted romance novels or craves a story about love at a more meaningful level, Great Big Beautiful Life is indeed quite beautifully great.