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syverfyre 's review for:
Great Big Beautiful Life
by Emily Henry
This is unfortunately my least favorite of Emily Henry’s books. This was a combination of to stories: a romance between two writers and a mystery/biography of an heiress. Both writers are vying for the role of this heiress’s biographer, since she’s been hiding from the public for 20+ years and has much to say about her famous life and her family history. As a result, I kind of felt like this book was incomplete. Both the romance and the uncovering of this woman’s story felt like they should have been their own stories, and put together it felt like I was missing pieces from each. The writers, Alice and Hayden, were sweet characters and I particularly liked Alice’s introspection on herself and her relationship with her mom throughout the book. The heiress, Margaret, still felt like a bit of a mystery even after all of the pieces were revealed – including why these two seemingly separate stories overlap – but it felt a bit rushed and forced. I felt like I was reading Beach Read by Emily Henry and Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid mushed together, and I think both books are fantastic on their own. Even the romance between Hayden and Alice felt less believable and less *real* than her previous books, many of which I LOVE. So many threads of this book could be so powerful, but I think she tried too hard to put too much into 1 book.