Books Like Great Big Beautiful Life

Why Each Pick

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid

The closest match in setup. Reclusive film star Evelyn Hugo picks an unknown magazine writer to hear the true story of her career and marriages, and her past unfolds alongside the writer's present. Like Margaret's story, it is about a famous woman finally controlling her own narrative. The writer's present-day story is about her career and divorce rather than a new romance, and the drama lives in the past. Content note: domestic abuse.

Beach Read by Emily Henry

Emily Henry's earlier story about two writers. A romance novelist and a literary fiction author, neighbors for a summer at the lake, swap genres to cure their writer's block. Like Alice and Hayden, they are opposites who push each other creatively and romantically. It is a tighter, two-person romance with no family saga, and it deals with grief and a father's secrets.

The Hating Game by Sally Thorne

For rivals competing for the same job. Lucy and Joshua, executive assistants who can't stand each other, both go after the same promotion, and their games turn into something else. It shares Great Big Beautiful Life's competitive banter and slow-burning attraction between opposites. It is a pure office rom-com with no second storyline, narrated by Lucy alone.

Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid

For a story that moves between a past era and a later crisis. In the early 1980s, astronomy professor Joan Goodwin trains for NASA's shuttle program and falls for a fellow trainee. Like Great Big Beautiful Life, it moves between an earlier era and a later moment, and its love story is one that had to stay private. It is historical fiction more than romance, from the author of Evelyn Hugo.

Love and Other Words by Christina Lauren

For dual timelines that reveal what happened before. Macy and Elliot fell in love as teenagers in a secret reading closet, then didn't speak for eleven years, and the book alternates between then and now. Like Great Big Beautiful Life, it builds its romance and its emotional reveal side by side. It is a second-chance love story about two people, without a family saga.

The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks

For a love story told as a life story. An old man reads the tale of a summer romance in the post-war South to a woman in a nursing home, and their past and present meet. It shares Great Big Beautiful Life's frame of an older life finally being told. It is short, at 227 pages, a classic tearjerker rather than a rom-com. Content note: dementia.

Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston

For a famous family, a nosy press and a romance that has to stay secret. The president's son and a British prince fake a friendship after a public scandal, and it turns into love. It shares Margaret Ives' world of public image and private truth, but it is a fast, funny contemporary rom-com set in politics, with no historical storyline.

The Flatshare by Beth O'Leary

For opposites falling for each other slowly, one note at a time. Tiffy and Leon share a London flat and a bed on opposite schedules, writing Post-it notes before they ever meet. It shares Henry's warmth and banter, and both books save room for serious subjects under the humor. It is a British rom-com with no rivalry and no family saga. Content note: emotional abuse in a past relationship.