TREMENDOUS book

The story of the Ives family was interesting but the main character’s romance felt rushed. Decent writing - didn’t wow me but wasn’t cringy.

Will definitely read this book one more time??

Just finished this romance novel. It had an interesting storyline but was also hard to get through. I thought the secondary characters and storylines were overly developed and unnecessarily complicated while the primary characters were left a little sparse.

Me encanto! Creo que es de los mejores libros que releído, reí, lloré y me enamoré de los personajes. Si estás pensando en leerlo, te lo súper recomiendo! Además, las vibras de pueblo pequeño y playa no fallan

I love how interwoven the two storylines are. It’s heartfelt and touches on hard topics with sensitivity and depth. I will miss these characters!

I read Emily Henry as a guilty, summer pleasure. Her books are like reading a phenomenal rom con movie. Ms. Henry has gone above and beyond with her latest book! She mines much deeper emotions and experiences with her new characters. She has created a masterpiece that allows her readers to grow with her characters. Bravo Ms. Henry! I am looking forward to seeing this work on a movie screen as one of the best romantic movies ever!

Evelyn Hugo lite and a romance I never quite cared about

An okay read. A bit predictable. Margaret Ives’ story was well-written and compelling. Meanwhile, it felt like the primary function of Alice Scott and Hayden Anderson’s relationship was to provide some resemblance to the author’s previous works. Margaret’s story didn’t leave a lot of room for it to develop so it was mostly a distraction, and the space probably would’ve been better spent expanding on other things. It was odd. Like another reviewer said, there really wasn’t a basis for the weight Hayden put on penal-vaginal penetrative intercourse, especially in the context of all the other forms of sex and intimacy they already engaged in together. The format confused me because I thought “Their Version” was Alice and Hayden’s and “Her Version” was Alice’s until Alice clarified about seventy percent of the way through that the format for her pitch was the media’s version juxtaposed with Margaret’s version. The format also does exactly what the book spends a lot of time criticizing “the media” for: being reductive rage-bait. The media has always been a spectrum encompassing anything from the likes of TMZ, to Fox News, to the New York Times, independent journalists and more. This is particularly relevant when Margaret’s sister, Laura, shifts the narrative from celebrity “news” to what would be national news with the recovery of illegal arms shipments and plots to assassinate government officials. While Alice could be seen as representative of how media can be liberating, the writing goes out of its way to treat her identity as a part of the media as a technical aside. I appreciated the amount of depth that Margaret’s story got, though I wasn’t really interested in another romanticization of the California Gold Rush in the form of Margaret’s great-grandfather, which was bad for the environment, the miners, and most of all Native Americans. The power of the “Ives media empire” once introduced is quickly forgotten despite remaining relevant enough for Margaret to think Cosmo visited to ensure they wouldn’t write about him. It’s one thing to be a celebrity, it’s another to be a celebrity with a propaganda machine at your disposal and the stable wealth to catch and kill stories and sue other companies. The author also neglects the history behind the Jezebel stereotype. It is specific to the intersectionality of Black women and came about in contrast to the supposed purity of white women and therefore would not be applied to Margaret, a distinctly white woman.

A long way to go for a mediocre conclusion.