I’m a sucker for romantic comedies and Emily Henry books are my vice. Last year, the first thing I did after returning home from studying abroad in Barcelona was go to the Indigo store in my mall and purchase a copy of “Funny Story.”
I love the overdone tropes. I love the hazy quaint towns her characters inhabit. Most of all, I love the payoff at the end when the love interests decide that they want to be together. I am proud to say I have read all six novels in the Emily Henry universe and will not be slowing down anytime soon. My personal favorite is “Beach Read.”
“Great Big Beautiful Life” is the latest of Henry’s reads and for fans, it is very different. The story centers around Alice Scott, an ever-positive writer for internet site “The Scratch.” She has spent her entire life obsessed with all things celebrity culture and has finally tracked down the elusive Margaret Ives. Ives is a former socialite (think of Paris Hilton, but in the 1970s). After years of public scrutiny and a life in the spotlight, she disappeared.
Here is where Hayden Anderson comes in. He is a Pulitzer Prize winning writer and has been summoned to write a biography on Ives. Alice and Hayden are given a proposition by Margaret, now well into her 80s. They will each meet with her for interviews separately and by the end of a month, one of them will get to tell her story.
Part of the reason I love these books is because of the unrealistic love stories. This situation would absolutely never happen. Alice and Hayden compete with each other. Of course, they end up staying in rooms next door to each other in their hotel. Of course, they run into each other everywhere they go. It is the absurd coincidences that keep readers hooked.
When Alice goes anywhere in the town, you almost ache for a run-in. Hayden’s character is a grump, he’s ultra serious, only eats salads and feels that Alice is no competition for him. As Margaret put it, Alice is someone who “finds the beauty in everything.” So, in no way do the two make sense and yet in true rom-com fashion, they fall for each other.
This book is the most literary fiction-centered of Henry’s novels. There is less emphasis on the growing love-hate relationship between Alice and Hayden and more on Margaret’s life. It is almost reminiscent of Taylor Jenkins Reid’s “The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo” with its old-Hollywood stories put to an interview format.
I personally really enjoyed the chapters on her life as tabloid scandals have always fascinated me, yet I did not feel as attached to Margaret’s life.
With every other chapter, we learned about the Ives family lineage. Starting with gold miners in the 1800s, moving to the 1900s with the start of a media empire, reaching Margaret’s entertainment industry parents in the 30s. We made it over halfway through before we could get to Margaret.
I was a little disappointed at the lack of the relationship building. I want to see my characters outside of the walls of love, but I felt like the chemistry just wasn’t there. I have grown a little tired of the quirky, ray of sunshine troupe in my protagonists. When Alice was described as wearing watermelon earrings, I groaned a little. Not because I do not like my characters to have moxie, but because it feels overdone and not like someone that I would meet in real life.
But I have to remember that this is why I reach for these books. They are the best form of escapism where people are effortlessly witty, and chemistry is described as electric. So, I may roll my eyes at the story, but with each page turn, I kept waiting for Alice and Hayden to get together. Their enemies to lovers’ story kept me biting. In the world we live in now, it’s nice to turn your brain off and catch up with a love story. I will always find comfort in a story like this. One where I know, it will all be okay.
