Great Big Beautiful Life takes readers on a suspenseful romantic journey that echoes two of Emily Henry’s most beloved books. The sparkling dialogue and competitive enemies-to-friends-to-lovers frisson between celebrity magazine journalist Alice Scott and her literary darling rival, Hayden Anderson, harkens back to Henry’s adult debut, Beach Read, the first of five consecutive number one bestsellers for Henry. The small-town setting and complex family connections echo Book Lovers, the novel that multiplied her fandom. But the epic, intergenerational story of fabulous wealth and heartbreak that Alice unpacks in pursuit of her career-making break in Great Big Beautiful Life is a substantially new spin on the usual Henry formula.
Alice is a Georgia-born and -raised, now Los Angeles-based writer covering the celebrity beat for The Scratch (modeled on New York magazine’s uber-popular, culture-driven spinoff The Cut). Alice has a tight circle of fellow writer friends and a sister she loves dearly, but “not much else” going on in her personal life. As she bemoans, “I am not even officially the girlfriend of the man I’ve been dating for seven months.” An aspiring biographer, Alice is determined to secure her dream assignment: writing the life story of the elusive Margaret Ives—heiress, widow to a rock star, and recluse who has been out of the public eye for decades. Aside from her subject’s reticence, one thing stands in the way: Hayden, a writer with more experience and far more literary cache.
In addition to being competitors, Alice and Hayden have, at least on the surface, a grumpy-sunshine attraction of opposites. Where Alice seems perpetually friendly, smiling and eager like a golden retriever, Hayden has the aloof sleekness of a cat. But the reality is more nuanced. When Margaret decides they should stay a month to get to know her and vie for the assignment, the two are forced into proximity, and layers of personality and attraction are revealed. It’s an expert marriage of character and circumstance.
Great Big Beautiful Life boasts the perfect bone structure of a classic Henry rom-com—the banter and physical and emotional intimacy are exquisite—but there are also strong differences between this and Henry’s previous work, primarily the space given to Margaret’s past. Her painstaking, multicentury account of her illustrious yet tragic American family and Alice’s dogged investigation into the parts that Margaret holds back are intertwined with the love story. Margaret says this reflection on the past is crucial to understanding who she is, likening her life to a quilt. But Alice gets frustrated that Margaret won’t focus more on her own square in that rich pattern. This difficult balance is mirrored within the book itself. The compelling if expansive story-within-the-story at times threatens to overwhelm Alice and Hayden’s gorgeous, inexorable tumble into love. But their chemistry is just strong enough to sustain them both.