Posted on by saraelizabeth419

Emily Giffin’s All We Ever Wanted

I finished this novel on the bus this morning, but there was only one problem: I couldn’t ugly cry.

I was sitting in the aisle seat next to someone because there were no empty rows available, and with only about forty pages left, I hesitated to open it.  Knowing that it was an Emily Giffin novel, and that I always end up crying towards the end (and, more importantly, hadn’t cried yet), I knew that it was a gamble, but I also NEEDED to know the ending.

Giffin’s last couple novels departed a bit from her usual storytelling style, but with her powerful new novel, All We Ever Wanted, she brings it back home – and this is truly one of her GREATS (it may even surpass my up-til-now fav, Love the One You’re With).  As a fan of her novels for many years (I’ve read ALL 9 books and gone to 3 signings), I’m already waiting in anticipation of two years from now when her next novel will (fingers crossed) be out.

In All We Ever Wanted, Giffin deals with complex issues of truth, values and family – the lengths that you would go to protect someone you love while also staying true to yourself, the truth, and your values.  Told in three different voices, the novel follows: Nina Browning, a woman who grew up in a middle-class family, married into Nashville’s elite, and whose son may be behind a scandal; Tom Volpe, a single and overprotective dad trying to do the best by his daughter (also Giffin’s first ever male narrator); and Lyla Volpe, Tom’s teenage daughter who, after one drunken night at a party, finds herself the subject of a social media scandal.  Who’s telling the truth?  Who’s lying?  Questioning themselves and their relationships with those closest to them, Nina, Tom and Lyla are thrown together as they search for a way to live truly meaningful lives.

Just published this week by Ballantine, this is a novel that you DO NOT want to miss.  And, as I warned my boyfriend this morning, I will be rereading the ending over the weekend so that I can properly cry.

 

“Maybe he’s thinking about his younger self—and what Nina saved me from all of those years ago.  But maybe, I hope, he’s simply thinking about his mother—and how she somehow managed to save him too.”

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Emily Giffin’s All We Ever Wanted. Ballantine Books 2018.
Posted on by saraelizabeth419

When A Fictional Book Becomes Reality

When Carrie Bradshaw started reading Love Letters of Great Men in the first Sex and the City movie, everyone (including me) wanted a copy.  Originally created as a prop, disappointed fans did not have to wait long for the anthology to (magically) line booksellers’ shelves.  I have a copy and have probably opened it a half dozen times.  If a movie would do that, it’s no wonder than that a TV show would eventually follow suit.

In the fourth season of Younger, the publisher’s ex-wife comes to Empirical Press with an autobiographical novel about a woman who runs away from her husband and children to find herself.  Knowing that the book would cause a scandal if published anywhere else, they decide to publish it and the love triangle between Liza, Charles and Pauline (Charles’ ex) emerges.  Both the upcoming book AND the love triangle become the prominent storyline for the remainder of season 4/spilling into season 5.

Exactly two weeks ago Season 5 of Younger premiered.  And to coincide with the new season, Simon & Schuster published a real-life version of Marriage Vacation on the very same day.  (Side note: Younger is actually based on a 2005 book of the same name by Pamela Redmond Satran that S&S also published.)  And if you were wondering what all the hype was about with page 58, now it your chance to read it!

Set as a standalone novel, Marriage Vacation follows Kate Carmichael as she flies halfway across the world, leaving her family behind to clear her head and reconnect with the person she used to be.  At times both humorous and thought provoking, this is the perfect novel for the summer (even if you’ve never watched the show)!

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Marriage Vacation by Pauline Turner Brooks. June 5, 2018 Simon & Schuster.
Posted on by saraelizabeth419

B.A. Paris’ The Breakdown

Trust is one of the most important things in life, without it, your world can be turned upside-down.  But what happens when you don’t know who to trust?  With her sophomore novel (and next one, Bring Me Back out this month!), B.A. Paris joins the ranks of S.J. Watson and A.S.A. Harrison in her story-telling abilities, begging the question: can you even trust yourself?

The Breakdown opens with a torrential storm.  Cass is taking a shortcut home through the woods, the same shortcut that her husband, Matthew, has warned her against taking.  She notices a car pulled over on the side of the road and tries to see if the driver needs help.  She comes close to getting out of her car, but thinks better of it and continues on her way home.  The next morning, Cass wakes to find that the woman in the car was murdered.  She may be the only witness, except no one knows that she was there.

And with that, B.A. Paris’ masterpiece begins.  At first we believe Cass – her recollection of the events that she keeps replaying in her head seems plausible – but soon those thoughts start to take over her life.  She becomes increasingly forgetful and paranoid that you start to question the validity of her story.  Was she even there?  Did she murder the woman?  Is she sane?  Paris weaves the threads so tightly at times that you can’t tell fact from fiction.

What I love most about this story is that moment when the pieces start to fall together – it’s then that you realize just how deep it really goes.  And that sometimes, the truth is not what you think it to be.

 

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The Breakdown, B.A. Paris 2017 St. Martin’s Press.