Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry

3/5 stars

SPOILERS AHEAD

I mean... it was fine. It didn't really do much for me. I felt like I was reading Seven Husbands, and to be honest I didn't really love that one either.

It all just felt a bit flat for me. It's been over a year since I read my last Emily Henry book, but I remember loving them. Maybe I went into this one with high expectations because of that, or maybe I was so let down by Abby Jimenez's recent book that I thought this would blow my socks off, but it just didn't.

The writing felt too similar to Taylor Jenkins Reid, and maybe that's becuase I listened to the audiobook, which is narrater by Julia Whelan who narrated Malibu Rising so I automatically make that association in my head. It just felt like it was trying really hard to be a lot of different things, so it didn't really nail any of them. It wanted to be a romance, it wanted to be a rivals to lovers, it wanted to be a deep and revealing mystery of a life lived in fame, it was all just a lot that didn't quite make me feel that much.

The ending was so incredibly rushed to me. The whole story only takes place over a two-ish month period, and then they're immediately moving to Atlanta and having a baby in the blink of an eye. It just wrapped up so suddenly and it felt unnecessary. It could have ended with them agreeing to move to Georgia together and that's it, and I think it would have been more satisfying. Also, this could be coming from my absolutely hatred of a pregnancy trope, especially when it's thrown in at the very end to just tie the ends up in a predictable, slightly annoying, bow.

The characters were fine, nothing special. Alice and Hayden were just run of the mill journalists and I didn't really care a whole ton. I liked Hayden a little more because I'm a sucker for a grumpy guy, but I would have needed a shot just to be in Alice's overly cheery, absurdly optimistic presence for more than a couple minutes. There were also just so many characters. Maybe if I had read it instead of listening to it, it would have been easier to keep track of, but I found myself just not really caring much about the history of Margaret's family becuase it got too tangled for me. "The Story" chapters had a hard time keeping my attention, and I had to keep rewinding because I would zone out.

I will say that I did not expect Hayden to be Margaret's grandson, that was a fun surprise. Overall though, the pacing was slow, the ending was rushed, and it was just kind of meh. If I was feeling more introspective perhaps I would have liked it, but it was very middle of the road for me.