Guess what? It’s finally out! Emily Henry’s Great Big Beautiful Life released on April 22, 2025. Great Big Beautiful Life focuses on the romance between Alice Scott, a journalist hoping for success, and Hayden Anderson, a Pulitzer-winning author — both aiming to write the biography of one of the most famous women, Margaret Ives, who disappeared from the public eye.
Emily Henry is most well known for Book Lovers, People We Meet On Vacation and Funny Story, which all became extremely successful, making her synonymous with the BookTok romance genre. Her novels are characterized by hilarious banter, electric chemistry and character growth. Great Big Beautiful Life was also on Goodreads’s Most Anticipated Books for 2025.
Despite this, Great Big Beautiful Life fell flat — it seemed unrefined and fragmented. The book sits at the intersections of romance, literary fiction and mystery, one of its main selling points. None of these genres, however, were fulfilled properly.
The romance was also somewhat questionable, especially when compared to Henry’s other books. The characters, Alice and Hayden, both lacked personality and depth, which might be a result of the use of the cliche tropes of grumpy/sunshine and rivals-to-lovers. It seemed like Alice’s only personality trait was being happy all the time and Hayden’s was being sullen and tall. Since the majority of the middle chapters focused on Margaret, their relationship felt neglected — until Alice seemingly at random decides that she is in love with him.
The literary fiction portion of the novel, which is mostly made up of Margaret’s story, was somewhat enjoyable. The reader learns about Margaret’s backstory alongside Alice through a series of interviews, where Margaret reveals the drama and events behind the famous Ives family, also called the House of Ives. If you have read Taylor Jenkins Reid’s The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, this might seem familiar. Compared to Reid’s book, however, Great Big Beautiful Life felt like an unoriginal, lower quality version. Some of the interviews especially felt unnecessary and drawn out, making Margaret’s narrative boring at times, whereas in The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, the spoken style of the interviews contributed to the overall drama of Evelyn Hugo’s history. As Jack Edwards, a popular online book creator put it, “[Henry] tried to re-heat Taylor Jenkins Reid’s nachos and they were […] a little stale. It’s been done! And it’s been done better.”
As for the mystery within the book, the shock was a little obvious, but more evidently, it felt rushed and tacked on at the end. It could have been much stronger if we had seen the characters interact more.
While it is clear that Henry is capable of writing amazing books, like Book Lovers, the main reason for Great Big Beautiful Life’s inadequacy is due to the poorly meshed sections of the novel. Instead of Margaret’s story and Hayden and Alice’s romance happening simultaneously, they felt disconnected. While I do respect Henry for trying to step outside of her typical romance stories and appreciate that she made an effort to give the characters depth and detail, I wish this book was more edited and more cohesive.