Book publishing is a notoriously snobbish business whose “literary” authors are its rock stars. So-called “genre writers” — purveyors of romance, mystery, and the like — while arguably the industry’s primary money-makers, are rarely viewed with the reverence reserved for their more “prestigious” counterparts. That’s why many resist having their work relegated to categories like romance.
Not so Emily Henry. Since making her adult debut in 2019 with “Beach Read,” she has embraced the mantle of romance novelist. In six years, she’s launched five No. 1 bestsellers which together have sold more than eight million copies. She has a Swiftie-like fan base who call her “Em-Hen” and swarm midnight book launch parties. In less than a decade, she has established herself as one of the genre’s leading ambassadors.
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“Great Big Beautiful Life” is Henry’s enormously entertaining sixth novel. As stock markets plummet and political tensions heighten, it offers a reprieve from our dystopian present reality. The book unabashedly unfurls virtually every trope in the romance writer’s arsenal, aiming straight for the reader’s tender heart — and their desire to escape into a carefree universe. The quaint southern coastal town where the plot unfolds is idyllic. The only true strife Henry’s charming protagonists, Alice and Hayden, face is whether the non-disclosure agreement they’ve signed to audition for a role as biographer of a once-notorious heiress will preclude their own happy ending.
First there’s the meet-cute. After tracking down the reclusive Margaret Ives, a former socialite whose storied family was among the richest of the 20th century, Alice Scott is invited to Little Crescent Island, Ga., to vye for the chance to tell her story. Now in her eighties, Margaret has lived for decades under a pseudonym, attempting to elude her famous name and live simply after her legendary musician husband dies in a car accident the paparazzi helped cause. While Alice knows the chances of Margaret actually going public with a book are slim, she knows it will make her career if it happens. What she doesn’t realize until the day she first meets with Margaret is that she’s not the only candidate in the running.
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Enter Hayden Anderson, a Pulitzer Prize winner incensed to learn he’s in competition with Alice for the job. He’s secretive, handsome, and something of a misanthrope. Alice is his opposite; she’s an eternal optimist — funny, flirty, and adept at breaking the ice. She chips away at his gruff exterior, meeting his glares with smiles and clever quips. He goes for a daily run at the crack of dawn and favors green tea over coffee, which prompts her to leave a hot cup outside his hotel room door each morning, with a croissant on the side. Initially, he holds Alice at arm’s length, but her unfailing good humor wins the day. Soon enough, they can’t keep their hands off each other. Armor penetrated.
Their newfound intimacy poses multiple dilemmas, among them that they’re both still competing fiercely to be Margaret’s biographer. And then there’s the matter of professionalism: they are bound by the privacy agreement they’ve signed, and can’t risk Margaret seeing them as co-conspirators. They try to backtrack and take it slow — which only serves to heat things up. Hayden makes a valiant effort to pull back, but Alice is increasingly hard to resist.
After nearly a month’s worth of delicate conversations with Margaret, Alice hopes the two have forged a bond, but as she researches the Ives family history, she stumbles onto a suspicious tidbit that sets off alarm bells. Hayden, too, has come to question what Margaret is really up to; they decide to confront her with their doubts. While Margaret’s motives no longer seem straightforward, at least one thing has become crystal clear: Alice and Hayden are head over heels in love. Whether fate will bless their union is left to the novel’s final pages — during which, by the way, I cried like a baby.
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The enemies-to-lovers theme is as old as time — or at the very least extends back to the Jane Austen era, when Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy swallowed their pride and prejudice and fell prey to each other’s charms. Emily Henry here throws fewer obstacles in her characters’ path to true love, though there are some intriguing twists and turns — and a bit of soul-searching — along the way. But even during fraught moments, such as when a hurricane traps Alice in her rental cottage without power, Henry finds a way to infuse her pages with Ephronesque humor and a stimulating dose of eroticism. Occasionally, her heroes and heroines confront their demons or face disappointment or loss, but their light never dims for long. Readers can count on Em-Hen to transport them to a kinder, sunnier, and funnier galaxy where happy endings can be counted on — just as Swifties count on Tay Tay to nail every concert performance.
Henry’s magic elixir, it seems, is to return again and again to a simple boy-meets-girl formula while writing textured novels populated with vivid characters that never feel formulaic: she takes us back to a time when we believed, with all our being, that love conquers all. She also reminds us that a good, old-fashioned cry can be very revitalizing. Bring on the tissues!
GREAT BIG BEAUTIFUL LIFE
By Emily Henry
Berkley, 432 pages, $29
Leigh Haber is a writer, editor, and publishing strategist who for the last 10 years ran Oprah’s Book Club and curated the Reading Room section of O, the Oprah Magazine.
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