Published: April 22, 2025
Length: 12 hours and 2 minutes
Format: Audiobook
Genre: Chick-Lit
Characters: Alice Scott and Hayden Anderson
POV: Alice’s, 1st person

𝒞𝑜𝓃𝓉𝑒𝓃𝓉:
꧁•⊹٭ rivals to lovers ༊*·˚. books about books ༊*·˚. mystery ༊*·˚. historical fiction ༊*·˚. two timelines ༊*·˚. Evelyn Hugo vibes ٭⊹•꧂

Review

This was a book I was ridiculously excited to read, and I am truly heartbroken that I had to call time of death at 60% through of the audiobook. I kept zoning out, nothing in this story could hold my attention the more I tried. I just couldn’t do it anymore. I prefer reading something with a bit more romance or thrill to make it harder to put down. This really had neither. Everything was just SO bland.

“There’s an old saying about stories, and how there are always three versions of them: yours, mine, and the truth.”

“Love isn’t something you can cup in your hands, and I have to believe that means it’s something that can’t ever be lost.”

“I think you live in a world that’s more interesting than the one most people live in, and I wish I could live in it too.”

Blurb

Two writers compete for the chance to tell the larger-than-life story of a woman with more than a couple of plot twists up her sleeve in this dazzling and sweeping new novel from Emily Henry.

Alice Scott is an eternal optimist still dreaming of her big writing break. Hayden Anderson is a Pulitzer-prize winning human thundercloud. And they’re both on balmy Little Crescent Island for the same reason: To write the biography of a woman no one has seen in years–or at least to meet with the octogenarian who claims to be the Margaret Ives. Tragic heiress, former tabloid princess, and daughter of one of the most storied (and scandalous) families of the 20th Century.

When Margaret invites them both for a one-month trial period, after which she’ll choose the person who’ll tell her story, there are three things keeping Alice’s head in the game.

One: Alice genuinely likes people, which means people usually like Alice—and she has a whole month to win the legendary woman over.

Two: She’s ready for this job and the chance to impress her perennially unimpressed family with a Serious Publication

Three: Hayden Anderson, who should have no reason to be concerned about losing this book, is glowering at her in a shaken-to-the core way that suggests he sees her as competition.

But the problem is, Margaret is only giving each of them pieces of her story. Pieces they can’t swap to put together because of an ironclad NDA and an inconvenient yearning pulsing between them every time they’re in the same room.

And it’s becoming abundantly clear that their story—just like the tale Margaret’s spinning—could be a mystery, tragedy, or love ballad…depending on who’s telling it.