Emily Henry's New Book Was Inspired By A Taylor Swift Song | ELLE (2025)

It’s a big day for romance lovers. Emily Henry’s latest book release has finally hit bookstores, and with the author revealing that it was inspired by a Taylor Swift song, our excitement has definitely kicked up a notch. We’re big Emily Henry fans in this house, with her rom-com novels being some of our favourite books to devour on a beach holiday. The setting just feels correct for an author who’s written about finding love in a small coastal town and taken us on the journey of two book lovers falling head over heels for one another. One of her earlier books is also literally called Beach Read.

In the last five years, since making the pivot from young adult (YA) novels to contemporary adult romance books, her annual release has become one of the most anticipated books of the year for romance readers. It also helps that every single novel is being adapted for the screen, making it that much sweeter to buy into the characters through the books first.

Today, we finally get our next dose of Emily Henry magic, with her latest novel Great Big Beautiful Life hitting Australian bookstores today. The story follows two journalists who are hired by Margaret Ives, an elusive and famously private heiress, to tell the scandalous story of her family history. The only catch is that only one of the writers will actually be given the job of telling the story, but it sounds like a combination of piecemeal interviews and raging attraction between the pair makes the job difficult for them both.

Honestly, that’s more than enough to sell us on picking up the novel. But Henry’s reveal that the book was inspired by a Taylor Swift song has only ramped up our interest, even if it only inspired one aspect of the story. In Great Big Beautiful Life, Henry details over a century of Margaret’s family history, so naturally, she sought out inspiration from the real lives of celebrities and public figures through history.

One such person was Rebekah Harkness, who was born in 1915 and died in 1982, was an eccentric socialite and patron of the arts who once famously filled an entire swimming pool with Dom Perignon champagne. She also inherited a huge fortune from her husband, Standard Oil heir William Harkness, and quite publicly feuded with the elite residents in Watch Hill, Rhode Island, where she also owned a home. Harkness is also often associated with feelings of loss and grief, as she outlived her husband and several of her children, and she was the inspiration for Swift’s ‘the last great american dynasty’ from her Folklore album.

“I love that song, and love the story behind it,” Henry told E! News ahead of the book’s release. “Every once in a while I find myself back on the Wikipedia page, just reading through. I just find those kinds of larger-than-life families really, really intriguing.”

“What interests me about those families is this sense that this legacy… and with that comes a ton of privilege and experiences that the average person doesn’t have access to.”

Emily Henry

Harkness’ life and Swift’s song weren’t Henry’s only inspirations behind the book, though. She also explained that the British Royals, and the tragic events surrounding Princess Diana’s life in the 1990s in particular, were huge inspirations. Of course, the Kennedy family and the tragedies that surround the family (specifically, the aviation incidents) also provided inspiration behind her characterisations of the Ives family.

“What interests me about those families is this sense that this legacy gets passed down from generation to generation, and with that comes a ton of privilege and experiences that the average person doesn’t have access to,” Henry told E! News. “But there also can be this sense of a family curse.” It’s Henry’s decision to pull from the real lives of so many dynastic families through history that adds to the depth of storytelling in Great Big Beautiful Life, and we can’t wait to devour the entire novel — ideally on the beach.