one order of two writers falling in love, please

It was kind of a trip to read this alongside the audiobook version of Riley Sager's The Only One Left (what were the odds I choose two very differently genred books with an infamous older woman telling a younger woman their life story?), but I really liked this quite a lot. Before I began reading, a dear friend of mine who'd already read it herself told me she wanted to discuss what genre I thought the book really was. Now, I cannot confidently say I know. I think it sits somewhere between literary fiction and traditional contemporary romance. And I really like that! This is different for Emily Henry, and I think it works well overall! That same dear friend likened the structure of this novel to a Taylor Jenkins Reid novel, and now I can't unsee it. I think Henry's done her own sort of attempt at telling a story within a story that all ties up together (more or less).
I really loved the few moments dedicated to Alice and Hayden's inner thoughts concerning the research and writing process, because they get so incredibly close to my attempts at verbalizing how vast and scary and amazing it feels (see the quotes below). I was very much here for the two writers falling in love trope, too. Because of course it's grumpy/sunshine, and they're both attracted to each other but aiming for the same highly coveted autobiography job, so have to put their chemistry "on pause." I also loved the descriptions of a hot and sticky Georgia summer on a little island/peninsula. While I think the ambience was working very well throughout this entire story (I highly relate to Alice's coffee addiction as well), some parts of the plot felt a bit rushed and loosely tied. For instance (without direct spoilers): 1) the stuff with Captain Cecil, 2) what maybe could've been much more profound bonding stuff between Alice and her mom, and 3) Margaret's "grand reveal" near the very end. I have to say I was more interested in Alice and Hayden's through line than Margaret's retold life story, and if Emily Henry was going for more of a direct lit fic focus with this project, she sort of lost me. I applaud her all the same for trying something off her beaten path, considering she's walking her particular path quite well.



Some of my favorite quotes from ​Great Big Beautiful Life:

"'It'll be lonely here without you,' he says matter-of-factly, and I try not to melt into the sand, where the goop of my former body would never be entirely recovered."

"Maybe truth can't be whittled out of a pile of research but instead has to be built from all of it, no spare pieces left behind, absolutely nothing discarded."

"I've written stuff I'm really proud of that hardly anyone read. I've written stuff I'm proud of that no one liked. That doesn't mean it didn't deserve to be written."

"With writing, you could always add more. More, more, more until you got to the heart of a thing, and after that, you could chip away the excess."

"'Would you like to go to dinner with me?' he asked, and she would. She would like to go to dinner, dessert, bed, breakfast, lunch, and dinner again with him."

---