Review Detail

Reader reviewed by Stephanie

Several months after the start of Emma and Andys perfect married life, Emma chances upon Leo at a New York intersection, and both of their worlds are rocked. For Leo is Emmas most significant ex, the one who broke her heart almost eight years ago. What they had was intense, passionate, and deep. It blew Emmas mind away, but it ended badly and then, two years later, Emma started dating her best friend Margots old brother, Andy. The Grahams accept and love Emma like she is a second daughter, and she knows that she has something really good, healthy, and stable with Andy, who is a great man.

So why all the rebirth of feelings towards Leo? As Emma starts to lead a double lifehaving dinner parties with Andy and Margots Atlanta friends, keeping her photo shoots for articles that Leo is writing quiet from everyoneshe begins to have doubts about where she truly belongs. Their move to Atlanta makes Andy extremely happy, but Emma feels stifled without her photography work back in the Big Apple. Leo seems to bring that excitement and nervous back into her stable life, and now Emma needs to decide what is best for her: her steadfast, unwavering, caring husband, or the one man who managed to bring out the best and worst in her.

Emily Giffins fourth novel does not have the deep character-reader connection her debut novel, SOMETHING BLUE, did, but it is a fine book of its own. The characters are well-drawn, and the plot may be thin sometimes (for instance, I felt as if the thing about Emmas mothers death could have been more employed), but overall it is a good book.