What's behind Emily Henry's wild popularity?

Emily Henry is back with one of the most anticipated novels of 2025, Great Big Beautiful Life. The romance and women's fiction author has become a phenomenon in the past few years, with her books topping bestseller lists.

Today on Commotion, host Elamin Abdelmahmoud is joined by Rolling Stone's internet and culture writer CT Jones and bookish content creator Alicia Foshay to discuss what makes Henry's writing so popular and whether she lives up to the hype.

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player.

Elamin: A lot of the discourse around her books are around the writing style and the idea of straddling the genres between romance and literary fiction — or more specifically, women's fiction — moving between those two universes. I think we've got to define these categories. CT, how would you describe the difference between this idea of romance and women's fiction?

CT: I am so glad you asked. What a beautiful question, Elamin. The answer is sexism. I'm joking — actually, I'm not joking. 

Elamin: That's real. Get into it.

CT: Women's fiction is an umbrella term…. It's kind of this term to be like, "We think girls will pick this up in a library and we think that moms who are on vacation to Mallorca will see this in the middle of the airport and say, 'I could read this for a couple days.'" That's what people think of when they think of women's fiction.

It's also important to note that there is no comparable version for men's fiction because people just assume that men can understand genres better. So instead, you don't have to be like, "This is for the boys." You just get to write a book and put dragons on it, and everyone apparently knows who it's for. 

But one of the things about women's fiction that you can usually tell it by, is people usually market it if there's a big emotional journey, some kind of giant life change, or people are working through their emotion, their feelings about being human in general, or some kind of historic event. And then romance, the easiest way that I can think about it is: emotions can occur and sometimes it's awesome if they do, but if there isn't a happily ever after at the end of the book, there will be hell to pay. 

Elamin: That's the expectation. Take me to that place.

Alicia, famously, men don't have emotions, that's why they just call [their books] "fiction," I believe. What are your thoughts? 

Alicia: I am in complete agreement, and I don't think we should pull back on the sexism thing. I think it's completely true. I think people, in general, are comfortable with things tailored to women that are one-dimensional. And so they like to fit things into boxes because the idea that a book tailored to women could be about more than romance, love and daisies is unfathomable. 

It's the same way that George R. R. Martin can write Game of Thrones, which is a highly sexualized fantasy series, and it's not called "dragon smut." But when Rebecca Yarros does it — the exact same thing — it is [called "dragon smut"], and it is tailored to women, and it's viewed as not an important book in the space of fantasy. 

I also think that it's almost a little bit insulting to men too. You, Elamin, are reading Emily Henry and you're enjoying them, like men can enjoy highly emotional books. We all have the capacity to move between genres, and I think that's kind of what Emily Henry is doing with the evolution of her books.

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Panel produced by Amelia Eqbal.