Reviews tagging 'Mental illness'

Stora vackra liv by Emily Henry

133 reviews

emotional mysterious slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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emotional funny hopeful medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I had to keep on reminding myself this was Emily Henry and not Taylor Jenkins Reid. Not that that was a bad thing.
Loved the final parts with Alice’s parents story and choosing love.

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emotional lighthearted medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: No

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emotional hopeful medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character

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emotional lighthearted reflective relaxing slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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dark emotional funny mysterious reflective medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

About half of this is devoted to the memories of Margaret, an elderly hermit and former paparazzi headliner from a line of uber rich, messy people. Alice and Hayden are journalists who Margaret sets up as potential memoir writers for her story, competing for the chance to author the book. Of course, they fall in love (the other 50% of the story). I thought this was fine, but there were some side character dropped plots and pacing issues that could’ve made it all hang together a little better. It could’ve also used a little more showing and a little less telling, especially in Hayden’s part of the story. There’s a lot of random (past) trauma. Overall, not my favorite or least favorite Emily Henry book.

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emotional hopeful lighthearted tense fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

This book is just The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo but straight and written by Emily Henry. That's not to say it's a bad book, it's just unoriginal. 

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emotional hopeful mysterious medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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adventurous challenging emotional funny lighthearted mysterious reflective tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Emily Henry's newest novel is here! And I absolutely fell in love with it! I will say this one was different than most of her other works but I think that is what made this book so nice and refreshing.

The story revolves around two writers who show up at the same place around the same time to conduct an interview. This client wants to write a book, a true story of her life in all the details for the world to finally read. The catch here is the client wants to conduct both interviews and at the end pick one person to write her book and tell her story.  

The characters were very interesting, the two writers were polar opposites when compared to personality. Alice is the picture of sunshine, hopeful and full of determination to become a great writer. Hayden is more down to earth and logical on how he approaches his writing and picking clients for books. They are brought together to see who gets the honor of getting to write the unknown story of the just as equally unknown former socialite Margaret. They were a great foil for one another with Alice's positivity contrasting beautifully with Hayden's more cynical outlook on life. It was nice to see them bounce off of each other and slowly start to fall in love with each other. The other main character was Margaret was a woman of secrets and it was exciting to see her story unfold during each chapter!  

The writing was different from her usual as this book was a more literary style rather than just a straight romance like she has written before. It was really nice to read something different from her, I feel like she would be great if she chose to write more books like this in a similar style. 

Overall I really did enjoy this book and it was a fresh surprise from Emily Henry, it had really solid emotion and relatable characters to make this one of my new favorites of her series of novels! 

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emotional inspiring lighthearted mysterious medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I feel a lot of feelings about this book. For once, I read it in German but for most of the book, I listened to the audiobook and that one I really disliked. It felt really slow and dragged a lot without any markings when a new chapter or a history part began.

As soon as I started reading it with my eyes though, I really enjoyed the book again as I always (so far) did with Henry‘s books. 

I really liked Margaret and the mystery surrounding Jodi, her mysterious housekeeper. Alice was a great narrator and main character, and her love story with Hayden was sweet and pretty convincing. 

The history parts were partly my favorites, especially when I started reading the book and started to notice how the names were actually spelled after listening to them (I thought Gerald was spelled Darren ups) and all the plot twists wooing into them were just chefs kiss.

And just for fun, bc the public was comparing them: all in all I like Great Big Beautiful Life a lot more than The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, even though the plot twist in the end was pretty similar. Also The Last Great American Dynasty is my favorite Folklore song, so I was ecstatic when getting to know Henry wrote a book inspired by it and it definitely didn’t disappoint.

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