Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry

Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry is a novel that chronicles the story of Alice Scott, Hayden Anderson, and Margaret Ives. Ives is a reclusive heiress from a media family who lives on a small island in Georgia and engages both Henry and Anderson as potential writers of her biography. 

The book is told first person through the eyes of Alice, who develops a romance with Hayden, and they both see that there's more to Margaret's story, and why she brought them into her life, than she's revealing to them. 

Margaret tells Alice and Hayden that she'll meet with each separately over a 30-day period, and then decide who she wants to tell her story. During those thirty days, she speaks of family secrets, but it doesn't come out till the end that one of the secrets is that Hayden is her grandson. He doesn't know, as Margaret gave Hayden's mom for adoption. Rather than being about writing a biography, Margaret's plan was to get to know Hayden, and Henry's book about the two of them and Alice finishes nicely.

Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy

Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy tells the set in the future story of Franny Stone, who arrives in Greenland with the purpose of tracking the world's last flock of Arctic terns (deer, wolves, and bears are already extinct). 

The book is McConaghy's debut novel and seems to hit on many of the same themes and emotional constructs that she covers a few years later in her novel Wild Dark Shore, with the more recent book a bit tighter of a read. It felt as if McConaghy developed further her craft as a writer, something both logical and kind of inspiring.

Franny joins with the crew of the Saghani, and the boat travels to the Weddell Sea in Antarctica. Her quest is revealed as an attempt to fulfill a desire of her late husband, Niall, and it's a nice ending to the book.