Audiobook length: 12 hrs 2 mins
Rating: 4.5 stars
CBR17 Bingo: G (A book title starting with G)
After months of online research, Alice Scott has tracked down the reclusive former tabloid darling Margaret Ives and hopes to persuade the woman to let Alice write her biography. Imagine the unpleasant surprise for Alice when it turns out that Margaret might not want to tell her life's story at all, and she basically wants to 'audition' Alice and another writer for the next month, before she makes up her mind. That other writer, Hayden Anderson, acclaimed journalist who won a Pulitzer for the last celebrity biography he wrote.
Since Hayden seems taciturn and generally disapproving of everyone, and especially Alice, Alice hopes that she, with her much more outgoing personality, might persuade Margaret to pick her to chronicle her eventful life. Meeting with the woman several mornings a week, Alice comes to realise that while Margaret has a story to tell, it doesn't start with her own birth, but involves several previous generations of the Ives family, all with skeletons in their closets and delectable secrets which have never previously been uncovered.
Since they are both stuck in the small seaside town together, taking turns interviewing Margaret, Alice and Hayden keep running into one another, and as the weeks pass, Alice discovers that Hayden might not be so arrogant and unpleasant as she initially believed. Because of the iron-clad NDAs they've signed, they can't really speak about the information they're getting from Margaret, so it becomes more natural for them to talk about other things. By the end of the month, when it becomes time for Margaret to make her choice, Alice is no longer sure that she wants to be in competition with Hayden, and that no matter what decision Margaret makes, it's going to lead to heartbreak in some way or other.
Some things have become clear to me over the last few years. I will auto-buy and even pre-order any book by Emily Henry and Ali Hazelwood, and I will probably enjoy the heck out of said books (or love them fiercely). As with Funny Story last year, I bought Great Big Beautiful Life and devoured it in about 48 hours, and then got the audiobook and listened to it again, taking more time to soak in the story and the characters.
With this book, Henry is doing something different from her previous romances, in that this book is just as much a tragic family saga, slowly unfolding in the tales from Margaret, and Alice and Hayden's romance becomes more of a secondary plot, just as important, but not quite the main focus. It's Emily Henry channelling Taylor Jenkins Reid, if you like. From reviews I've seen online, this shift has worked fine for some readers, while others didn't like it at all.
Because Margaret is a fascinating character, I didn't mind it, and especially when revisiting the book in audio for the second time, I came to see that Alice and Hayden's story is still woven through the entire framework of the book, and that there was a wider connection to everything in the story that was wrapped up very satisfyingly in the end. It also made me tear up a few times, but that's partially because it deals with some pretty heavy grief themes throughout, and it doesn't take much to make me cry these days.
The audiobook is narrated by Julia Whelan. She does an amazing job, as always.
Crossposted on Cannonball Read
No comments:
Post a Comment