I read all the movie novelizations of the original trilogy at the time but I didn't keep any so I remember them poorly. What I do recall is that I found the novelization of New Hope enormously helpful in filling in gaps and making the story more coherent. Although things like the prequel trilogy seemed very connect-the-dots, the first film left out a lot of things. This was particularly jarring because, of course, the whole story was in another verse so there were many things one had to pick up on.