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Hindustan Times

Book Review: The Great Big Beautiful Life is steeped in mystery but soggy on romance

Sometimes you get yourself a big, fat, shiny book and decide you're going to love it. But a quarter of the way through your reading marathon, you realise that your interest may not necessarily be waning, but... is this really what you signed up for? Author Emily Henry's Great Big Beautiful Life has the grandiose, the twists and the trappings. But if you pick up this book in the hopes of flipping through a nemeses-to-lovers trope, alert: you're going to be left high and dry. Past the point of the falsely-packaged 'romance', Great Big Beautiful Life offers just about enough to have the Kindle-bound Sherlocks make it through to the end — a reclusive heiress, ironclad NDAs and a dance-off, albeit of words — Emily knows her craft well enough to have you not abandon the read halfway through. But the final payoff comes not from the mind-bending exhilaration you expect from a mystery read, but more like the self-assuring 'ah' at the end of a fairly predictable slow burn. One thing Emily aces in, is in her attempt of character building and painting the choicest picture, she uses words that aide her narrative. Alice brings the spark and her Pulitzer-winning opponent Hayden brings some empty depth. Yet anything around them, let alone between them, is drowned in the winding, spotlight-hogging lore of Margaret Ives' family. More than anything, what the book falls short on is expectations. You walk in expecting Emily to deliver a subtly racy romance against the backdrop of warring words and blue oceans. You get instead are both, along with ample visual reprieve, but their merit stands robbed owing to the hollow, almost forced spot that Alice and Hayden are put in. The crescendo of a good romance novel – though this isn't really what that is – is the big realisation of having fallen head over heels. But here's the thing, more than Alice herself, you will be confused as to how she got there! If you walk into this novel dismissing any expectations of a slow burn romance then it will be a fairly engaging read. But, if a slew of stolen glances and fluttering tension is what you're really after then you're better off without it. Either which way, this book stands best defined by its lost potential. Title: Great Big Beautiful Life Author: Emily Henry Publisher: Penguin Random House India Price: ₹899