Great Big Beautiful Life

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.

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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.

Emily Henry is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Great Big Beautiful Life, Funny Story, Happy Place, Book Lovers, People We Meet on Vacation, and Beach Read. She studied creative writing at Hope College, and now spends most of her time in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the part of Kentucky just beneath it.

"Her best-selling romances have made her a new standard-bearer of the genre."—The New York Times

"Henry has become the master of the contemporary romance novel."—The Los Angeles Times

“Henry has become synonymous with modern and heartfelt takes on the romance genre.”—Rolling Stone

“Readers can count on Em-Hen to transport them to a kinder, sunnier, and funnier galaxy where happy endings can be counted on . . . Henry’s magic elixir, it seems, is to return again and again to a simple boy-meets-girl formula while writing textured novels populated with vivid characters that never feel formulaic: she takes us back to a time when we believed, with all our being, that love conquers all.”—The Boston Globe

“A sweeping love story about the choices we make and the threads that knit us together. Thoughtful, moving, and deliciously tender. Emily Henry is as captivating as ever. I love everything she does.”—B.K. Borison, New York Times bestselling author of First Time Caller

“A true joy. Playful, fun, and virtuosically plotted, Great Big Beautiful Life is a novel about life's winding paths and dangerous dead-ends—and the way that love can lead us out of the labyrinth.”—Kaliane Bradley, New York Times bestselling author of The Ministry of Time

“Emily Henry spoils us with this one, giving readers not one but two gorgeous stories. Great Big Beautiful Life plays with truth, story-telling, family, and the things we do for love. With a delicious slow-burn romance, a perfectly grumpy hero, and a setting that comes to life, this one checked all my boxes. Two compelling stories to move the plot forward meant I couldn't put it down! Emily Henry does it again!’”—Laurie Gilmore, USA Today bestselling author of The Pumpkin Spice Cafe

"Great Big Beautiful Life has everything you love in a classic Emily Henry novel, plus so much more. Nobody writes chemistry like Emily Henry, and you're guaranteed to fall head over heels for Alice and Hayden."—Beth O'Leary, international bestselling author of Swept Away

“What begins as a charming if standard rom-com evolves into a hauntingly beautiful meditation on what makes a life well lived in the latest showstopper from Henry . . . This is a stunner.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Both longtime Henry fans and new romance readers will devour this rivals-to-lovers slow burn, one of Henry’s best to date. Also good for fans of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid.”—Library Journal (starred review)

"Henry (Funny Story, 2024) continues to burnish her reputation for fashioning sublimely satisfying love stories with another perfectly calibrated, delectably witty tale featuring endearingly quirky, thoughtfully nuanced characters."—Booklist (starred review)

“Alice and Hayden’s romance is a delightful slow burn and Henry, as always, shines when exploring family drama . . . Both a steamy romance and a moving look at the sacrifices people make for love.”—Kirkus

“Emily Henry's talent for capturing great love stori

Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry is a contemporary romance about two writers who are drawn to the same story, the same person, and eventually to each other. The novel follows Alice Scott and Hayden Anderson, both ambitious journalists working in very different styles, who are invited to interview the elusive and celebrated Margaret Ives on a remote island. Margaret is an aging woman with a glamorous, complicated past, and she has agreed to tell her life story to only one of them. Before that choice is made, Alice and Hayden are given a month to spend time with her, ask questions, and piece together the truth behind her myth. What begins as a professional assignment quickly turns into a tense, intimate competition shaped by curiosity, attraction, and the possibility that Margaret’s story is not just about the past, but about the people listening to it in the present.

Alice is warm, lively, and endlessly open to possibility, even when life has not always rewarded her optimism. She believes in stories that connect people, in finding meaning in small details, and in approaching others with generosity. Hayden, by contrast, is thoughtful, guarded, and more skeptical. He is talented, disciplined, and deeply observant, but he keeps his emotional distance and prefers precision over romance, both in journalism and in life. Their personalities clash from the start. Alice is annoyed by Hayden’s reserve and his tendency to act like he knows more than he says, while Hayden sees Alice as impulsive and too willing to trust what people show on the surface. But the more time they spend together on the island, the more their rivalry becomes something sharper and more complicated. They begin to notice each other in the in-between moments: the way one listens, the way one deflects, the way one keeps showing up.

Margaret’s life story forms the spine of the novel. She is the daughter of a famously powerful and glamorous family, a woman who grew up under public scrutiny and whose life was shaped by wealth, scandal, expectations, and loss. At one point she was at the center of a famous, almost mythic love story, but time and circumstance turned her into a figure both admired and misunderstood. Her past includes romance, family tension, and choices that were made under enormous pressure. As Alice and Hayden hear pieces of her history, they begin to understand that Margaret’s life has been defined not by one grand event, but by a series of decisions made in the face of other people’s versions of who she should be. Her story is about love, yes, but also about authorship, control, and how hard it is to own your own narrative when the world prefers a more dramatic one.

The novel moves back and forth between Margaret’s revelations and the growing connection between Alice and Hayden. Their interviews with her are not neutral; every question they ask, every detail they uncover, affects how they see each other. Alice is drawn to Hayden’s quiet intelligence and the fact that, underneath his restraint, he is clearly carrying his own emotional weight. Hayden, for his part, begins to see that Alice’s cheerfulness is not naivety but resilience. She is someone who has learned how to remain open even after disappointment. Their conversations start to reveal why each of them became a journalist in the first place: both want truth, but they approach it differently. Alice believes in the human side of a story; Hayden believes in accuracy, evidence, and the parts people try not to say out loud. On the island, those approaches start to balance each other out.

As the month goes on, the atmosphere becomes more personal and more charged. The two reporters are isolated from their regular lives, surrounded by sea, silence, and the mystery of Margaret’s past. The setting gives the story a dreamy, almost suspended quality, as if time itself has slowed down enough for real intimacy to form. In that space, Alice and Hayden begin to lower their defenses. Small acts—a shared meal, a private conversation, a passing glance—carry as much weight as the interviews. Their attraction grows out of mutual respect as much as chemistry. Each begins to recognize in the other a loneliness they had not fully named. Alice sees that Hayden’s seriousness hides vulnerability. Hayden sees that Alice’s brightness is not a performance but a way of staying brave.

At the same time, the mystery around Margaret deepens. The more she shares, the more it becomes clear that the story she has carried for decades has been shaped by grief, sacrifice, and the compromises women are often forced to make in order to survive in public view. There is a strong sense in the book that female identity is often filtered through other people’s expectations—through family legacies, romantic legends, and the pressure to remain beautiful, polished, and legible to the world. Margaret’s truth is not always clean or easy to hear. Some of it is painful, some of it is surprising, and some of it reframes everything Alice and Hayden think they know about her. The novel uses her history to explore the cost of being turned into a symbol instead of being seen as a full person.

The romance between Alice and Hayden develops alongside this emotional unveiling. Their connection is not instantaneous or simple. They irritate each other, misunderstand each other, and resist the possibility that the other person matters more than they planned. But that resistance gives the relationship depth. What makes them compelling is that they do not just fall for each other’s appearance or charm; they fall for the way each one challenges the other’s habits of thought. Alice draws Hayden out of his self-protective seriousness, while Hayden forces Alice to face moments when optimism can become avoidance. They don’t erase each other’s flaws. Instead, they slowly become more honest because of them.

By the end of the novel, the emotional threads of Margaret’s story and Alice and Hayden’s relationship begin to converge. Margaret’s final truth is less about one dramatic reveal than about the recognition that a life is made of many loves, losses, revisions, and private decisions that outsiders rarely get to see clearly. Alice and Hayden, changed by listening to her, also have to decide what they will do with the feelings they’ve uncovered in themselves. The book closes with the sense that love, like story, requires courage: the courage to be seen, the courage to tell the truth, and the courage to choose a future that may not look tidy from the outside but feels real from within. In Emily Henry’s hands, “Great Big Beautiful Life” becomes a story about storytelling itself, about the myths people inherit, and about the quiet, transformative power of being understood by someone who first arrives as a stranger.