Romance · Free kit
Great Big Beautiful Life
Alice Scott, a sunny staff writer hungry for a serious book, tracks reclusive heiress Margaret Ives to Little Crescent Island off the Georgia coast. Pulitzer winner Hayden Anderson is already in the living room. Margaret offers both of them a paid month of interviews, an ironclad NDA, and only pieces of a century-long family story — then lets the wanting between the two writers become part of the mystery. Henry's 2025 novel is a slow-burn romance braided with a media dynasty's secrets: who gets to tell a life, who gets protected from it, and what a story costs the people living inside it.
“There's an old saying about stories, and how there are always three versions of them: yours, mine, and the truth.”
Complete free book club kit
BookClubee may earn a commission from Bookshop.org purchases, which supports independent bookshops.
Plan your meeting
Spoiler warning — best after finishing the book
Great Big Beautiful Life Discussion Questions
20 free questions written for Great Big Beautiful Life. No obvious right answers — built to spark real disagreement.
1. Alice sits in the rental car, blasting the air-conditioning, stalling outside Margaret's turquoise house and hand-painted pink door. Before you knew why she was nervous, what did that stall tell you about her — and did walking through the gate make her braver, or just louder?
Warm Up
2. Alice writes celebrity pieces for The Scratch and wants a Serious Publication her family will finally respect. Did you root for that hunger, or did it already feel like the wrong reason to be trusted with someone else's century?
Warm Up
3. Hayden arrives as a Pulitzer-winning human thundercloud. How long did that first impression last once he started mapping late-night diners, walking Alice home, and pretending to be her date when a stranger would not leave her alone?
Warm Up
4. Margaret begins her life story with Lawrence Ives, nearly a hundred and fifty years before her own birth. Were you impatient to reach the Tabloid Princess — or did that origin story change how you heard every later secret?
Warm Up
5. The NDA says Alice and Hayden cannot swap the pieces Margaret gives them. Which scene made that rule feel like a cute obstacle, and which scene made it feel like a real ethical bind?
Warm Up
6. Margaret hires both writers for a month, then doles out different chapters. Is that a biographer's craft test, a lonely woman's need for company, or a person controlling the only story she still owns?
Debate Starter
7. Alice tracked Margaret down after a tip and some stubborn internet sleuthing. Hayden was invited. Whose method felt more like journalism — and whose already felt like being chosen for a reason he did not have?
Debate Starter
8. After the first kiss, Hayden pulls away because he thinks he is about to take the job from Alice. Do you read that as care, as arrogance, or as a man using professionalism to dodge a feeling?
Debate Starter
9. Margaret tells Alice there was no appendicitis: after Cosmo dies, she secretly delivers a daughter in 1967 and asks Cecil to arrange an adoption so the child can belong to herself. Protection — or the Ives habit of hiding a baby to keep a public story clean?
Debate Starter
10. The month-long competition is a ruse: Margaret wants time with Hayden, and Jodi helps make the job look real by bringing Alice in. Is that cruelty dressed as hospitality, love with terrible tools, or both — and does Alice being used change how you score it?
Debate Starter
11. Alice refuses to write a partial-truth book, walks out, and still will not tell Hayden, because the NDA holds and because she thinks the story is Margaret's to give. Loyalty to a source, or a betrayal of the person she loves?
Debate Starter
12. Hayden turns down the job before Alice's pitch, saying he is not the right person and bristling at Margaret's evasions. Generosity toward Alice, discomfort with being handled, or a man already choosing the relationship over the prize?
Debate Starter
13. Optimists may call Margaret's choice a rescue: Nicollet grows up outside the tabloids. Pessimists may call it a theft that repeats Gerald hiding Ruth. Which cost are you willing to call worth it?
Debate Starter
14. Jodi is caretaker, niece, and the person who funnels Alice the lead. Is she the book's quiet engineer of care — or is she running a con on two writers so her aunt can meet a grandson?
Debate Starter
15. In a culture of celebrity memoirs, NDAs, and family group chats, who actually owns a secret once more than one living person is trapped inside it?
Deep Dive
16. The novel keeps handing you the public version and Margaret's version. After the last page, do you trust either as the truth — or is the third version something only the reader can assemble?
Deep Dive
17. Alice's mother seems unmoved by celebrity journalism; Hayden grew up performing perfection in a mayor's household. Which family pressure felt more familiar — and which one actually steered the plot?
Deep Dive
18. Margaret believes she is cursed, and that knowing her can only harm people. Does the ending prove her wrong, or only prove that some people will take the risk anyway?
Deep Dive
19. Alice and Hayden write the book together and later name a daughter Laura Grace. Does that treat storytelling as repair — or as one more Ives production with a prettier last caption?
Deep Dive
20. The family uses "Nicollet" for the person you would give everything up for. By the end, who earned that name for you — the sister Lawrence left behind, the daughter Margaret released, Hayden, Alice, or someone else entirely?
Deep Dive