Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry (Berkley, 432 pages)
Cracking open a new Emily Henry novel is like settling into a beach chair, soaking up the warmth of the sun as you sink your feet into the cool sand and savor the moment of calm, unbothered bliss. And then it’s better than that, knowing you’ll be in this state of bliss for as long as the story lasts, rather than for a few minutes before the sun gets too hot and you start sweating and wishing you’d brought an umbrella.
That’s the experience I’ve had with all of Henry’s novels, and Great Big Beautiful Life was no exception — at first. That initial feeling of euphoria was real; as always, Henry’s engaging writing drew me right in and I was totally on board with the story, of two writers vying for a job to write the biography of a reclusive heiress who disappeared years ago following a series of tragedies and a lifetime of public scrutiny.
I love the premise. I’m a fan of the novel’s protagonist, Alice, a serial optimist, and her rival/love interest, Hayden, a serial pessimist. I even liked Margaret Ives, the mysterious octogenarian heiress.
So I was all in, at first, for Henry’s departure from her typical rom-com. But then the sun got too hot, so to speak. Because just as Alice and Hayden’s romance starts to heat up, Margaret’s telling of her “juicy” life story takes over and the focus shifts to her extensive family history.
And I do mean extensive. Even Alice notes some frustration when Margaret starts her story several generations back, rather than diving into the more recent past.
I already don’t love the story-within-a-story framework, because I almost always like one story more and feel antsy when I’m reading the “other” story, waiting to get back to the good stuff. In this case, I was by far more interested in Alice and Hayden. I loved their interactions and wanted more of them, to watch their relationship develop more explicitly.
Margaret’s family’s decades of secrets and deceptions? I really wanted to care, but it all felt so convoluted. I kept forgetting who was related to whom and in what way. And the element of mystery that permeates the Ives’ family history, that presumably the general public cares enough about to read a Margaret Ives biography, isn’t all that exciting.
I was hoping when we got to Margaret’s hyped-up romance with another briefly famous person, Cosmo, there would be similar vibes to Alice and Hayden’s story. But even that fell flat for me.
I truly believe that the cover of Great Big Beautiful Life is a disservice to what the novel actually is: more “women’s fiction” than rom-com. Every time I picked the book up, I could not align the cover image with the words inside — but only if I was on a Margaret chapter. The Alice/Hayden plot fit the cover perfectly. It’s like Henry wanted to try something more serious but also didn’t want to let go of the genre she does best, ultimately creating a disjointed reading experience.
All that being said, Emily Henry’s writing is so lovely, and I appreciate her attempt to step out of her comfort zone. I can’t help wondering, if Henry had written a book solely about the Ives family — and marketed it accurately, as women’s fiction rather than a rom-com — whether I would have been more invested, knowing that I’d be reading a historical family saga.
Likewise, I think Alice and Hayden’s story has more to offer, both their relationship and their individual stories. Alice as a character is refreshing in that she is so positive in a way that could be annoying but somehow is not. Hayden is the grumpy male character that’s been written plenty of times before, but there’s something about him that seems sincere from the beginning and more real than the average grump-turned-lover rom-com character. They also both have intriguing pasts that could have used more fleshing out.
Great Big Beautiful Life is two mostly good stories that just don’t mesh well. But it’s still worth the read. Henry’s writing is a warm hug, no matter what she’s writing about, so as long as you’re not expecting straight-up rom-com vibes, this is a few hours well spent. B —Meghan Siegler