REVIEW: Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry

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Dear Emily Henry,

For some reason, articles about this author in places like the New York Times tend to describe her writing as groundbreaking and unique as if no-one has ever written a fabulous romance novel before. I don’t subscribe to that view. Henry walks in the footsteps of giants. She is not the first, nor will she be the last, at anything within the romance genre. That said, I eagerly await each new release, confident I will enjoy it. Her books often show up in my best of lists for the year for a reason.  Great Big Beautiful Life is no exception. And my confidence was well rewarded.

Alice Scott is a journalist, focusing mainly on celebrities and popular culture. Her late and much-loved father had been a romantic and a huge fan of rock n’ roll singer Cosmo Sinclair. Cosmo Sinclair was married to Margaret Ives, the “Tabloid Princess” and wrote a series of songs to and for her. Margaret has been a recluse for decades, living under a pseudonym on a small island in Georgia, but now, Alice has a chance to write Margaret’s biography. It’s something she’s dreamed of. It’s the kind of work her mother, might actually like and approve of. It’s something her father would have been thrilled by.

Hayden Anderson is a music journalist. He wrote a Pulitzer prize winning biography of a famous musician who had been diagnosed with dementia. He’s also in the running to write Margaret’s story. While being somewhat in awe of Hayden, Alice is as determined as he is to be the one to write Margaret’s biography.

Much to their mutual dismay, Margaret wants to try each potential biographer out before she’ll commit. She’s hesitant about telling her story at all and nervous about trusting someone with it. So, Alice and Hayden will each have access to her for up to three days per week for a month, after which they will pitch her their ideas for the book and she will make a decision. They will be paid (equally) for their time but before they start, they have to sign strict NDAs. The NDAs include each other. No conferring!

Alice is an optimist and a romantic. She looks for the connections in the stories she writes. She grew up with her dad playing Cosmo Sinclair’s “Peggy All the Time” – old music even then but oh so romantic. She wants to know what happened between Cosmo and Margaret. And there’s a link in there to her dad as well of course. Alice’s relationship with her mother is a little more fraught but she hopes this project will bridge a divide between them. (It does – but not in the way Alice thinks it might.)

Hayden is  a little different in his motivation. My sense was that his interest in writing biographies was, at least in part, about his own desire to be out of the spotlight. He prefers for the attention to be on others, not himself. But also, after being embedded with his previous subject for four years, he’s looking for his next project. Margaret Ives is kind of the holy grail.

Alice tends to look for and find the good in people, Hayden being no exception. She’s basically determined to be his friend (at the least) from the start. Hayden doesn’t stand a chance.

I slow my pace, but surprisingly, he pauses halfway up the first set of steps when he realizes I’m behind him.

Not only does he pause, he actually turns toward me and makes eye contact. Huge progress for us. Friendship bracelets incoming, surely.

I loved the banter between Hayden and Alice. His dry humour. Her zingers. There was a wonderful buzz between them at every interaction.

“What position did you play?”

Now he outright scoffs, rolls his eyes as he sits forward again, forearms once more pressing into the table. “None.”

“Basketball?” I say.

“Despite my dad’s greatest wishes,” he says, “no.”

“Hayden,” I say. “You’re like six seven and pure muscle. You could be a millionaire right now.”

“I don’t think that’s how sports work,” he says. “I think you also have to have ‘talent’ or ‘coordination.’” He puts both basketball prerequisites in half-formed finger quotes against the table. “And also I’m six three.”

“Hm.” I nod thoughtfully. “That’s like a basketball five eight.”

“Now I’m wondering,” he drawls, “why you didn’t become a mathematician.”

Margaret’s story is also a large part of the book. There are chapters called “the story” each beginning with a sentence or two titled “their version” (meaning the tabloids, the media at large) and followed but a much longer, more detailed and nuanced “her version”. We read about the Ives family, Margaret’s great-grandfather, who founded the Ives media empire,and follow the family line down to her grandfather, her parents and then Margaret herself, as well as her beloved sister, Laura. There’s a vibe to, especially, this part of the book which reminded me a little of Nora Roberts. (That’s a compliment in case anyone was wondering.) Early on, we get a hint of what’s to come:

But the point is, I can see it hidden back beneath those sparkly irises of hers somewhere: the truth. The one we’ve never heard before.

What it was like to be born into a world of silver spoons and golden platters, of actors drunkenly swimming fully clothed through your indoor pool and politicians making handshake agreements across your antique dinner table.

How it felt to fall in love with rock ’n’ roll royalty, and for him to love you back, wildly.

And of course, about the other things. The scandal, the cult, the trial, the accident.

And finally, twenty years ago, Margaret’s disappearance.

What happened, but also why.

And why now, after all this time, she’s open to finally telling the story.

As Alice and Hayden separately spend time with Margaret, they also spend time with each other. Hayden isn’t exactly “grumpy” but Alice is fairly described as “sunshine”. Hayden is more reserved and contained rather than taciturn. But Alice is bright and open and funny and just draws him right in. Even though we don’t get Hayden’s POV in the book, we still get to watch him fall for her. We watch him be dazzled and beguiled, opening himself up to her only to be rewarded for it over and over. Hayden isn’t the only one who falls of course. Alice is just as dazzled by him, just as swept up.

I was really wondering what reason there would/could be for the “third act break up” or even if there would be one. I didn’t see it coming. Looking back, the clues were there but I am not kicking myself for missing the import of them. I think I reacted as I was supposed to. I went from “they’re perfect for each other; what could keep them apart?” to “well, that would do it” in a single paragraph. 

It does come very late in the book. There was not a lot of page time left to sort everything out. While I never doubted it would be sorted, there wasn’t a lot of space for it. I found myself with some questions by the end. Did I need to know these things for the book to work? Not technically, no. Did I want to know? Absolutely. I wanted to know how Hayden reacted to [redacted]. It really was skipped over. I wanted to better understand the timeline of the final chapter. It seemed to jump ahead months – maybe even years? – from one paragraph to the next. I was curious. There were some other things but they were the main ones.

I had happily spent a lot of time with Hayden and Alice during the bulk of the book. I knew they were perfect for each other. I knew they would be happy together. So, again, technically, I didn’t need to see a lot of them happy together at the end to know they were were. But I wanted to see a bit more than I did. I’d have liked to wallow in the HEA a little longer. I realise that Kristen Ashley levels of HEA-wallowing are not realistic for most books but a few more pages would have been very welcome.

So, right at the end, I had a few things on my wishlist. But for the most part, Great Big Beautiful Life was the kind of wonderful delight I’ve come to expect from Henry; witty banter, well-drawn characters, a story that put a smile on my face and kept me turning the pages late into the night.

“…What does pink feel like?”

I think for a moment. “I think it’s, like, the giddy part of a sunrise.”

“The giddy part of a sunrise,” he repeats.

“Yeah, you know how sunrise mostly just makes you feel like . . . awed, or moved? Like it feels profound?”

“No,” he says.

“Well, for me it does,” I say. “But there’s a moment when everything’s just all pink. Pink-lemonade pink. And it feels almost silly. Like the sky is playing. It’s a color that I’m shocked can be in nature. But since it can be, I really see no reason why it couldn’t also be in biscuits.”

He laughs, shakes his head to himself as he stuffs another bite of biscuit into his mouth.

“What?” I say.

“I’ve never once thought the sky seemed like it was playing.”

I shrug and sip on my coffee. “You think I’m being ridiculous,” I say, half statement, half question.

“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.

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