An Exclusive First Look at Emily Henry’s Next Book, Modern Classic

Emily Henry looked to Hollywood for Modern Classic, her latest title. In it, a burnt-out screenwriter and movie lover flees her life when she gets the chance to live in her Santa Barbara dream house. The plot is perfectly Henry, but fans might notice something different when they see Modern Classic in bookstores. The book, which follows 2025’s Great Big Beautiful Life, deviates from Henry’s signature look, which has influenced covers across the industry. Her adult debut Beach Read, in 2020, had large block lettering, saturated colors, and illustrated figures, often shown wearing sunglasses or from the back. Subsequent novels, which include People We Meet on Vacation, Book Lovers, and Funny Story, followed suit.

The Modern Classic cover has a much more retro feel, with bold colors that are slightly muted, larger figures, and more stylized font choices. Henry needed to do something that felt new. “I felt like it was the right moment to try something slightly different,” she says. “I had taken a year off, and in that time, I had done a bunch of other work, but I hadn’t worked on a novel in any form. I spent that year doing things that I had put off, traveling more, seeing friends so much more, and hosting so much more. When I came back to working on my next book, I really knew that I had to try to keep that momentum in my personal life going in a way that I had let slide for a really long time.”

Her writing break was desperately needed. “In some ways it’s my burnout book. I was very, very, very burnt out when I took my year of rest and relaxation,” she says. “Modern Classic was based around the idea of the fantasy of leaving your life when you’re overwhelmed by it, which I think all of us experience to some extent. It’s the idea that you could just throw your phone into the sea, and drive to a new city, start over, and not have any obligations, or any duties or responsibilities. I wanted to play with that idea a little bit, and play with the concept of burnout, and how do you get through that?”

Below, Henry shares details on Modern Classic and reveals Sandra Chiu’s cover design.

On what she wanted to achieve with the cover

When Beach Read came out, we spent a lot of time going back and forth on the cover, trying to find something that struck the perfect note and that felt like it split the difference between more a literary or upmarket book club cover and a romantic comedy cover, to signal to readers from both groups that it was in between those two things.

And since then, I feel like the landscape of covers has changed so much, and that kind of cover is very, very common. We wanted to nudge this a little bit further, again, to signal again that while this is in some ways a very straightforward romantic comedy, it’s a really good book for your book club. And it’s a really good book for people who love movies and capital-R romance, not just romance as a genre. So that was all part of the discussion, and it took a few tries, but we were really lucky that Sandra Chiu, the artist who has done all my covers, was game to try something really different from what she typically does.

On the inspiration

My agent and I put together a bunch of movie posters we loved, including Roman Holiday, which my cover pays homage to. This retro resort aesthetic that I really love really fits the tone of the book. We knew that we wanted it to feel like a classic movie poster, but then we also wanted the color to feel like that modern piece of Modern Classic. We wanted something vibrant, funky, and that would feel really fresh. It’s funny that it pulls really pretty closely from the colors of the covers of my first two books. We thought that was a fun throwback in a way, while also being totally different.

On building her main character, Beckett

The earliest versions of Beckett were much harsher and more cynical. I had to back into her a little bit to figure out what her particular brand of burnout is. In real life, there’s usually a lot of things happening at the same time, a confluence of events that can lead you to feel just so overwhelmed by your life.

For story purposes, I wanted there to be one grounded, emotional reason why at this moment she could not do her work. Why it all felt so overwhelming, why the idea of sitting down at her computer made her heart race, and her skin itch, and all of that. I had to really dig fairly deep to figure out her backstory, and what her work means to her, and what it means to her to not be able to work. I relate to her in a lot of ways, but she’s not me.

This interview has been edited and condensed.