4.5 stars- Well Written and an Important Topic
4.5 stars! I haven’t read an Emily Giffin book in awhile but I picked this one up after seeing so many fantastic reviews. I think I was expecting something vastly different to occur and when I realized the subject of the entire book was an inappropriate photo that leaked, at first I thought “that’s it?”. Be clear- I’m NOT saying that isn’t an important topic. This is such a timely and important book. Though it is fiction it so closely depicts a very real scenario that happens to women all too often. Teenagers- partying and drinking- poor decisions- inappropriate conduct. And parents with wealth that think money can solve everything and absolve guilt and fault. But I didn’t think I’d be interested in reading 331 pages of fiction about the topic.
Boy was I wrong. Because...the writing. It just ROCKS. The voices of each character, the characters themselves- I just CARED so much! Giffin made the traditional unpopular-girl-meets-popular-guy-and-falls-for-him-then-gets-hurt story SO MUCH more than that.
The ending disappointed me- but let me be clear that it was NOT the writing I was disappointed in. I was disappointed because the ending so entirely represented the truth of what would have happened in real life. What DOES happen in real life. There is something to be said about an author that doesn’t take the easy way out and wrap everything up in the perfect happily ever after story but ends on a realistic note. I wasn’t disappointed in the way Giffin ended the story at all but in the way our world is- and that made me THINK about the way our world is, which is such a great thing for a book to do.
The only thing I could say that I didn’t like was the abrupt skip ahead 10 years at the end. It didn’t give me enough wrap up of Nina and Kirk’s story line and left me feeling a bit like BAM- the book ended! But honestly, I couldn’t put this book down- the story just flowed and I found myself trying to find ways to squeeze in extra reading time because there was never a stopping point that didn’t leave me wondering what would happen next. Emily Griffin definitely goes on my list of authors that do the shifting of narrative perspective thing REALLY well.
Boy was I wrong. Because...the writing. It just ROCKS. The voices of each character, the characters themselves- I just CARED so much! Giffin made the traditional unpopular-girl-meets-popular-guy-and-falls-for-him-then-gets-hurt story SO MUCH more than that.
The ending disappointed me- but let me be clear that it was NOT the writing I was disappointed in. I was disappointed because the ending so entirely represented the truth of what would have happened in real life. What DOES happen in real life. There is something to be said about an author that doesn’t take the easy way out and wrap everything up in the perfect happily ever after story but ends on a realistic note. I wasn’t disappointed in the way Giffin ended the story at all but in the way our world is- and that made me THINK about the way our world is, which is such a great thing for a book to do.
The only thing I could say that I didn’t like was the abrupt skip ahead 10 years at the end. It didn’t give me enough wrap up of Nina and Kirk’s story line and left me feeling a bit like BAM- the book ended! But honestly, I couldn’t put this book down- the story just flowed and I found myself trying to find ways to squeeze in extra reading time because there was never a stopping point that didn’t leave me wondering what would happen next. Emily Griffin definitely goes on my list of authors that do the shifting of narrative perspective thing REALLY well.