Emily Henry’s romance novel success with cartoonish couples on the cover continues. This time as a Reese Witherspoon book club pick.

The optimistic ray of sunshine Alice is dreaming about her big writing break and hoping writing the biography of the mysterious heiress Margaret Ives will be just that. 

But there’s another writer also bidding to write the biography, the stern and grumpy Pulitzer Prize winner Hayden Anderson.

Ives wants to get to know the writers before she commits to one and gives them both a one month trial with an ironclad NDA so they can’t compare notes, and then she feeds them her secrets.

But as far as stories go, they are constantly reminded that there are three versions – yours, mine and the truth. And the tension between them keeps growing, no matter how much they try to bury their feelings. 

It sounds a lot like “The seven husbands of Evelyn Hugo” doesn’t it? 

The problem for me becomes the chauvinist and stereotypical story of the young bubbly woman looking for her big break paired with the wise, acclaimed serious journalist. Add to that that her job in the magazine is seen as nothing but a “gossip columnist”. I feel like Henry is speaking against her own books here. In the way that “Chick-lit” is viewed as subpar literature as opposed to literature targeted towards men. She’s feeding into that narrative and I don’t understand it. 

The male protagonist is a Pulitzer Prize winner, while the girl is a wanna be serious author. Please. 

Aside from that, the book fails to grab my attention. The “real” story, the one we came for is the love story between these two writers, but 80% of the book is about the interviews with their interviewee and her story and who she might chose to write her book. It drags out and it’s not really why we came. Honestly, it’s boring.

It’s also a problem that I don’t really buy the premise that she would “hire” and audition two writers for a whole month and separately tell them her whole life story before even hiring anyone to write it. This tabloid princess who escaped from the public eye and doesn’t want attention? Really? And if the fundamental part of the story is unbelievable, how is this going to work? 

It makes it predictable and it makes it fall flat.

I think Henry has chops as a writer, because I find her books really easy to read! There’s just no real reward at the end of the writing that flows so well. In other words – she brings you to the creek, but you come home thirsty. 

Now, there were some great messages in here, and our Mr.Grumpy has depth and heart, which of course he does! And he ended up being my favorite character after uttering things like:

“Just because something doesn’t make money or win awards doesn’t mean it doesn’t have value. Or doesn’t deserve to exist. The job is alchemy.”

He goes on a longer exploration about creating and it’s beautiful! For that scene alone, I adored this book. The rest was just filling or a setup for this deep scene of a writer who enjoys creating and has felt the downside of success. 

I hope Henry brings us more into the deep because it’s wonderful there and her really writing shines in those scenes. But this was a long walk in the shallows before we got to dive in. 

I’ve stated before that I feel like she sucks up to the bookish community and plays to the gallery with her books often being about writers and books. This definitely falls into that, but at the same time that one scene hit different this time. Maybe I’m slowly becoming a convert, but I still won’t rate this higher than three stars. ⭐️⭐️⭐️