Great Big Beautiful Life: Reese's Book Club - Emily Henry

Great Big Beautiful Life: Reese's Book Club

By Emily Henry

  • Release Date: 2025-04-22
  • Genre: Romantic Comedies
Score: 4.5
4.5
From 294 Ratings

Description

A REESE’S BOOK CLUB PICK ∙ AN INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ∙ Two writers compete for the chance to tell the larger-than-life story of a woman with more than a couple of plot twists up her sleeve in this dazzling and sweeping novel from Emily Henry.

As featured in The New York TimesRolling StonePeople ∙ Good Morning America ∙ NPR ∙ Vogue ∙ The Cut ∙ USA TodayCosmopolitanHarper's BazaarMarie Claire Glamour ∙ E! Online ∙ The New York Post ∙ Bustle ∙ Reader's Digest ∙ BBC ∙ PopSugar ∙ SheReads ∙ Paste ∙ and more!


Alice Scott is an eternal optimist still dreaming of her big writing break. Hayden Anderson is a Pulitzer-prize winning human thundercloud. And they’re both on balmy Little Crescent Island for the same reason: to write the biography of a woman no one has seen in years—or at least to meet with the octogenarian who claims to be the Margaret Ives. Tragic heiress, former tabloid princess, and daughter of one of the most storied (and scandalous) families of the twentieth century.

When Margaret invites them both for a one-month trial period, after which she’ll choose the person who’ll tell her story, there are three things keeping Alice’s head in the game.

One: Alice genuinely likes people, which means people usually like Alice—and she has a whole month to win the legendary woman over.

Two: She’s ready for this job and the chance to impress her perennially unimpressed family with a Serious Publication.

Three: Hayden Anderson, who should have no reason to be concerned about losing this book, is glowering at her in a shaken-to-the core way that suggests he sees her as competition.

But the problem is, Margaret is only giving each of them pieces of her story. Pieces they can’t swap to put together because of an ironclad NDA and an inconvenient yearning pulsing between them every time they’re in the same room.

And it’s becoming abundantly clear that their story—just like the tale Margaret’s spinning—could be a mystery, tragedy, or love ballad . . . depending on who’s telling it.

Reviews

  • Simply amazing

    5
    By Lildrumgrrl
    What an absolute treasure this book is. I adored every page.
  • I couldn’t put it down

    5
    By Dede Henley
    What a wonderful read! Such lovely character development - I came to love them all. I couldn’t wait to get to the end to see how Emily would knit it all together. Thanks to Reese Witherspoon for recommending this book. I’m an official Emily Henry fan.
  • Well written but…

    3
    By athenienne
    The prose is beautifully crafted, but there are two reasons I can’t fully love this book. The first is subjective: I don’t feel like there’s enough motivation for Alice & Hayden’s love story. The real heart of the book is Margaret’s tale and maybe Henry should have just told that. Alice & Hayden seem crammed in. I also wasn’t crazy about the idea that there’s some huge line between vaginal intercourse and everything else they did with each other up to that point - like THAT was the emotional point of no return for Hayden. The second is fully objective: I’m a Georgia native and there are some simple errors that pulled me out of the story each time they were made. There is nowhere on the Georgia coast that is UP from Atlanta, nor is there anywhere on the beach or sound that is only 3.5 hours from Atlanta. You also never have to search for an all night diner, because Waffle House exists and is everywhere. Fair enough if a character just has a thing for retro diners, but to make finding one your only option at 4am is wrong. These are easy things to get right with very little effort and I don’t know why that effort wasn’t made.
  • Great Big Beautiful Life

    4
    By kamkamham
    I am such an Emily Henry fan! From the flawed characters to the heart of her stories, they always hit a home run with perfectly imperfect endings. This book is no exception and the story was woven incredibly well with lovable characters and build-up and intrigue that keeps you reading far longer than you should. My only wish is that I hadn’t predicted a plot-line so quickly and been right about it (but it still didn’t take away from the joy in my reading experience).
  • “genre” is a code word - beyonce

    5
    By kennacashh
    i was floating after finishing this book. i felt seen as a daughter to an emotionally distant mother and stimulated as a romance lover. i also felt angry as a patron of pop culture. a lyric from a billie eilish song comes to mind “the internet is hungry for the meanest kind of funny and somebody’s got to feed it”. there are so many real themes throughout this book that we could all benefit from meditating on. however, to my surprise, when i open the illustrious app “tiktok” searching for booktok creators rubbing their feet together to self-soothe in the familiar post-book depression we all know and love, i’m met with reviews deeming the book unsatisfactory. unsatisfactory only bc there was too much “alice” and not enough “alice and hayden”. the ongoing argument is about whether this book is a romance or not and this feels eerily similar to a discussion surrounding a certain country album created by one of the greatest artists of all time around this time last year (*cowboy carter*)! if there’s one thing i’ve learned over the past year: you all love to sort, and throw a fit when you can’t! hopefully, when you all are done running that romance conversation to the ground, you can maybe reread this gem and find something you may have missed the first time around. at the very least, you’ll grow empathetically.

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