Amélia🤍

emily henry is one of my favorite authors, and yet it took me a year to take great big beautiful life off my shelf. partly because of lackluster reviews i had encountered and partly because it wasn’t my time to meet this story 🤍

reading it a year ‘late’ i love what gbbl gave me. i love that it gave me something to be excited about, a plot to be curious over, characters to reflect upon, so in many ways i really enjoyed this book. however, i think i liked the book because of what *I* projected unto it, and not so much for what it truly was.

the beginning started off great with a clear plot, three dimensional characters and understandable tension, but somewhere along the way all those great things fizzled out.
a core issue for me was margaret ives’ story. her story was hinted to be this crazy glamorous, legendary old-hollywood tale but in my opinion it did not live up to those expectations. the ‘twist’ at the end was fun but it also made the plot less solid, because i think she could have been way more straight-forward in acquiring what she wanted.

i really enjoyed the romance at the start, the initial connection was great and the attraction was palpable but again things went downhill towards the middle. after their first kiss things got messy and their connection felt slightly odd to the point where i just did not believe in their final love declarations.

i’m in a phase where i’m really trying to find my reading groove again, so i’m not rating books because i don’t want to feel like i have to quatitfy my reading experiences. so i’ll just say that though great big beautiful life is my least favorite emily henry book, i would still recommend it to anyone who just wants to float along with a story.