{"id":3663,"date":"2025-07-25T05:05:00","date_gmt":"2025-07-25T05:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/?p=3663"},"modified":"2025-07-25T05:05:00","modified_gmt":"2025-07-25T05:05:00","slug":"great-big-beautiful-life-by-emily-henry-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/?p=3663","title":{"rendered":"Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry"},"content":{"rendered":"

Great Big Beautiful Life<\/strong> by Emily Henry<\/a>
on May 28, 2025
Genres:<\/strong> Fiction \/ Romance \/ Contemporary<\/a>, Fiction \/ Romance \/ Romantic Comedy<\/a>, Fiction \/ Women<\/a>
Pages:<\/strong> 636
Format:<\/strong> Hardcover<\/a>
Buy on Amazon<\/a>
Goodreads<\/a> <\/p>\n

Alice Scott is an eternal optimist still dreaming of her big writing break. Hayden Anderson is a Pulitzer-prize winning human thundercloud. And they\u2019re both on balmy Little Crescent Island for the same reason: to write the biography of a woman no one has seen in years, or at least to meet with the octogenarian who claims to be\u00a0the<\/em>\u00a0Margaret Ives. Tragic heiress, former tabloid princess, and daughter of one of the most storied (and scandalous) families of the twentieth century. When Margaret invites them both for a one-month trial period, after which she\u2019ll choose the person who\u2019ll tell her story, there are three things keeping Alice\u2019s head in the game.
One: Alice genuinely likes people, which means people usually like Alice\u2014and she has a whole month to win the legendary woman over.
Two: She\u2019s ready for this job and the chance to impress her perennially unimpressed family with a Serious Publication.
Three: Hayden Anderson, who should have no reason to be concerned about losing this book, is glowering at her in a shaken-to-the core way that suggests he sees her as competition.
But the problem is, Margaret is only giving each of them pieces of her story. Pieces they can\u2019t swap to put together because of an ironclad NDA and an inconvenient yearning pulsing between them every time they\u2019re in the same room. And it\u2019s becoming abundantly clear that their story, just like the tale Margaret\u2019s spinning, could be a mystery, tragedy, or love ballad . . . depending on who\u2019s telling it.<\/p>\n

Tt wasn\u2019t a perfect book. It\u2019s VERY grumpy\/sunshine, to the point that sometimes\u00a0our two love interests feel like emojis in their depth. I didn\u2019t love the romance, maybe because while I loved the cheery\u00a0protagonist, I got irritated on occasion by her grimacing hero. But I loved the way the non-romance story went, and I thought the ending was unbearably sweet. This was a beautiful mix of a sweeping, unexpected romance and a tale of generational trauma; how we rely too much on time to do the hard work for us.<\/p>\n

This was a hard book to rate for me. For a good 2\/3rds I would have said this book was three stars and the last portion I would have rated it five stars. That said, I am meeting in the middle with four stars. Bottom line: this book was worth the always-interminable-feeling wait. I can see why some readers might not connect with it. EH took a risk here by stepping away from the themes she\u2019s usually known for. While her previous books had more of a focus on romance, this one doesn\u2019t follow that same formula. If you\u2019re expecting a traditional romance, this might not be the book for you.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

The post Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry<\/a> appeared first on Book Nook Buzz<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry on May 28, 2025 Genres: Fiction \/ Romance \/ Contemporary, Fiction \/ Romance \/ Romantic Comedy, Fiction \/ Women Pages: 636 Format: Hardcover Buy on Amazon Goodreads Alice Scott is an eternal optimist still dreaming of her big writing break. Hayden Anderson is a Pulitzer-prize winning human thundercloud. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":3664,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3663"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3663"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3663\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}