Now that all ya’ll are recovering from your midnight Emily Henry parties, I have a review for you. Just kidding. If you were at a midnight release party, you own the book and probably don’t want my two cents. Go read the book and enjoy. As for those of you who don’t know what I am talking about, Emily Henry is at the top of her game, at the very tippy top of the romance book lists every single spring for the past six years, the top of so many readers’ summer reading lists. I have enjoyed reading her paperback titles for the past few summers, and I was pretty excited to get to read an ARC in the days just before the release of Great Big Beautiful Life–it’s my first highly anticipated ARC. I finished this morning (within 24 hours of starting). It drops tomorrow.

It’s possible that Alice is about to land the writing assignment of a lifetime. She is in Georgia to meet with the disappeared tragic heiress that inspired her late father and that the world hasn’t heard from in thirty years. But even though the lead is legit, Alice is shocked to be thrown into a competition for the work, especially when her competition is a surly, Pulitzer-winning journalist. Can a scrappy optimist even compare to his credentials? And by the end, will she even want to?

I guess I should also say (because you are unlikely to be coming from reading my other Henry reviews) that I am not exactly Henry’s number one fan. Nor am I even a big romance reader. But I like to read adequately-written and absorbing romance now and again for a little r&r, and I consider Henry to be the best author I have found for that purpose, so far. (Actually, I found another one just last week, but I haven’t had the chance to review that yet, so we’ll pretend for just a little bit longer.) Just so’s you know. I’m more of a literary and speculative reader but I also read, well, everything.

Overall: Great Big Beautiful Life is what I expected. It’s modern romance. And it has some deeper story elements that might be classified as women’s literature. Because that’s what Emily Henry writes. It might be a little longer that her previous books. Is it? Maybe not. Maybe they’re all a little longer than most romance novels (around 400 pages, though those are roomy pages).

Also this: Great Big Beautiful Life is my favorite of Henry’s books so far. Now, there is a caveat—I still have not read Funny Story. I have it here on my shelf. I will read it this summer. Still, out of the five I have read, I like this one the best, hands down.

Despite…

…that spice-seekers are going to get quite annoyed at the two-story interweaving of this plot and the second story stepping in and taking whole chapters at a time. We don’t stay on Hayden and Alice‘s story the whole time. The two stories are related, for sure, but since the main characters are journalists, we are also breaking away to hear the story they are pursuing. And that is sure to annoy a few people who are here for the–as Booktok likes to call it–“smut.”

…that Henry failed a few times on rooting her physical descriptions or reinforcing them, so that when I got to the almost-last page and a character suddenly had short hair or was like thirty years younger than another character (and I had been picturing both not that way), I was quite annoyed.

…that I don’t think Henry’s strength is setting. Her strengths include characters you want to hang with, intricate entanglements, steamy heat, pervasive coziness, gentleness even, and life reflection. But I LOVE Savannah and I recognize that this book just didn’t sink into these spaces, didn’t really paint them large or dwell on them because it’s not the vibes of her books, at all.

…that I saw it all coming. There are some amazing twists in Beautiful Life, but I really did know everything well ahead of time. Hopefully you won’t, because that’ll make for a better read for you.

…that it bounces in and out of first person POV.

…and that the book definitely contains some unrealistic and obvi things, but that’s because of its genre. I don’t need it to be too complicated or nuanced. I read other books for that.

I found myself really happy that Henry stuck with a one-perspective romance at this point in time. I am tiring quickly of two-perspective romances and multi-POV books. That’s not to say I don’t like some of them, I just don’t want every book to be that. It’s overdone and sometimes the simplest is the best.

I thought Beautiful Life had great chemistry (and heat) as well as a touching and real other-story. Both together. Already I see reviews that say the chemistry didn’t work but I just balk as those ones. Cold fishes. It really worked for me.

I continue to be flabbergasted by how Henry comes up with new ideas every time she writes for how to stretch out the steam, moving consummation as close to the end as she can get it. This book has another new reason, even if it’s not completely believable, to accomplish this YET AGAIN. It’s kinda amazing how she manages to do that in a modern world where most people have run out of excuses for it (unless you make them religious, and that’s not Henry’s game). I mean, other romance writers do this too, but I don’t read a ton of them, and some authors don’t bother to try. (They have to deal with ramping it up—raising the physical or emotional stakes—or whatever.) It’s an art, Henry, and I see it.

Also, I was happy to see characters with some age on them. The protagonist and the love interest are already in their thirties (wow!), and most of the other supporting characters are much older.

Conclusion? I was titillated. I kept turning the pages and stayed up late reading. I laughed a little. I shed a tear, twice. So, all goals met, right? At least for this type of book, yes.

Quite frankly, I think readers of Henry and the genre will love this book (even if you’re always going to pass some readers like ships in the night). I enjoyed it. Most of you will too. Take a chill pill and enjoy.

“Just because something doesn’t make money or win awards doesn’t mean it doesn’t have value. Ot doesn’t deserve to exist. The job is alchemy. You take a hunk of rock and you try to turn it into gold, and the gold isn’t even really the point.”