by Emily Giffin ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 20, 2014
Despite her typical wit, intelligence and discernment, Giffin may not be able to win her audience with this problematic...
After the death of a beloved family friend, Shea Rigsby realizes she’s been treading water. Will a spectacular new job and a fairy-tale romance change everything or simply remind her of what she truly loves?
At 33, Shea is in a listless relationship and has a fun but dead-end job at her hometown alma mater, Walker University. Walker is in Texas, where football is right next to God, and its highly successful football program has been under the sage and celebrated guidance of head coach Clive Carr for years. Shea’s practically a member of the Carr family; her mom is best friends with Connie, Coach’s wife, and Shea’s been best friends with their daughter, Lucy, since birth. But after Connie succumbs to cancer, everyone is emotionally unmoored, and they collectively decide to focus their energy on moving Shea forward. Breaking off with her aimless boyfriend opens up space for a thrilling new relationship with a former Walker superstar now playing in the NFL. And with a little help from Coach, she lands her dream job as a Dallas sports reporter. But even as everything seems to be going so well, Shea is a little stunned to find that she isn't really happy and that her job as a reporter may force her to face some unsettling truths about her star-kissed boyfriend, the world of college sports and the man she’s had a lifelong crush on—for the good and the bad. Best-seller Giffin (Where We Belong, 2012, etc.), known for her insightful exploration of women’s deepest desires, has taken on a hard-sell storyline in her newest novel. While her in-depth look at football, family dynamics and unexpected romance is both compelling and perceptive, it also takes some disconcerting turns, and readers may find the story ventures too far outside their comfort zones.
Despite her typical wit, intelligence and discernment, Giffin may not be able to win her audience with this problematic romantic journey.Pub Date: May 20, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-345-54688-3
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: July 10, 2014
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by Christina Lauren ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 10, 2018
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.
Eleven years ago, he broke her heart. But he doesn’t know why she never forgave him.
Toggling between past and present, two love stories unfold simultaneously. In the first, Macy Sorensen meets and falls in love with the boy next door, Elliot Petropoulos, in the closet of her dad’s vacation home, where they hide out to discuss their favorite books. In the second, Macy is working as a doctor and engaged to a single father, and she hasn’t spoken to Elliot since their breakup. But a chance encounter forces her to confront the truth: what happened to make Macy stop speaking to Elliot? Ultimately, they’re separated not by time or physical remoteness but by emotional distance—Elliot and Macy always kept their relationship casual because they went to different schools. And as a teen, Macy has more to worry about than which girl Elliot is taking to the prom. After losing her mother at a young age, Macy is navigating her teenage years without a female role model, relying on the time-stamped notes her mother left in her father’s care for guidance. In the present day, Macy’s father is dead as well. She throws herself into her work and rarely comes up for air, not even to plan her upcoming wedding. Since Macy is still living with her fiance while grappling with her feelings for Elliot, the flashbacks offer steamy moments, tender revelations, and sweetly awkward confessions while Macy makes peace with her past and decides her future.
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-2801-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
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by Sally Rooney ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 16, 2019
Absolutely enthralling. Read it.
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A young Irish couple gets together, splits up, gets together, splits up—sorry, can't tell you how it ends!
Irish writer Rooney has made a trans-Atlantic splash since publishing her first novel, Conversations With Friends, in 2017. Her second has already won the Costa Novel Award, among other honors, since it was published in Ireland and Britain last year. In outline it's a simple story, but Rooney tells it with bravura intelligence, wit, and delicacy. Connell Waldron and Marianne Sheridan are classmates in the small Irish town of Carricklea, where his mother works for her family as a cleaner. It's 2011, after the financial crisis, which hovers around the edges of the book like a ghost. Connell is popular in school, good at soccer, and nice; Marianne is strange and friendless. They're the smartest kids in their class, and they forge an intimacy when Connell picks his mother up from Marianne's house. Soon they're having sex, but Connell doesn't want anyone to know and Marianne doesn't mind; either she really doesn't care, or it's all she thinks she deserves. Or both. Though one time when she's forced into a social situation with some of their classmates, she briefly fantasizes about what would happen if she revealed their connection: "How much terrifying and bewildering status would accrue to her in this one moment, how destabilising it would be, how destructive." When they both move to Dublin for Trinity College, their positions are swapped: Marianne now seems electric and in-demand while Connell feels adrift in this unfamiliar environment. Rooney's genius lies in her ability to track her characters' subtle shifts in power, both within themselves and in relation to each other, and the ways they do and don't know each other; they both feel most like themselves when they're together, but they still have disastrous failures of communication. "Sorry about last night," Marianne says to Connell in February 2012. Then Rooney elaborates: "She tries to pronounce this in a way that communicates several things: apology, painful embarrassment, some additional pained embarrassment that serves to ironise and dilute the painful kind, a sense that she knows she will be forgiven or is already, a desire not to 'make a big deal.' " Then: "Forget about it, he says." Rooney precisely articulates everything that's going on below the surface; there's humor and insight here as well as the pleasure of getting to know two prickly, complicated people as they try to figure out who they are and who they want to become.
Absolutely enthralling. Read it.Pub Date: April 16, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-984-82217-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Hogarth
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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