The One & Only by Emily Giffin

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Emily Giffin, the beloved author of such novels as Something Borrowed and Where We Belong, returns with an extraordinary story of love and loyalty--and an unconventional heroine struggling to reconcile both.

Thirty-three-year-old Shea Rigsby has spent her entire life in Walker, Texas--a small college town that lives and dies by football, a passion she unabashedly shares. Raised alongside her best friend, Lucy, the daughter of Walker's legendary head coach, Clive Carr, Shea was too devoted to her hometown team to leave. Instead she stayed in Walker for college, even taking a job in the university athletic department after graduation, where she has remained for more than a decade.

Major cringe. Enough said.

I cannot begin to say how much I despised this book. I am a diehard football fan who lives in a small city that lives and breathes for their one professional sports (football) team, so I was so excited to read a fictional book—by a female author for once—that I might be able to relate to. However, by the fifth chapter I knew what was going to happen (and maybe even before then). I pleaded to Emily: “No! Don't go there! Please! Take another route with your plot.” But, alas, she went there.

The entire book made me feel wildly uncomfortable though this isn't the reason why I wished I had never wasted time on this book. I felt the writing was weak, along with the story lines in general. I would have thought this was Giffin's first novel since it came across rather amateur. I didn't enjoy her last two novels either so I am officially breaking up with Emily Giffin... at least for a while.

Also, are people being bribed to give this book more than two stars? I simply can't believe that the average rating for this novel is a little over three stars.

To star off I will say that this book actually answered a question I was left with after reading Heart of the Matter so that's a plus for me. When I picked this book to read I knew it had to do with football but I wasn't expecting it to basically be all about football. I don't think there was a single page that didn't mentioning something to do with football. I am not a football fan so I found myself drifting a lot while reading this book and just wanting to hurry up and finish reading it. With that being said there was other stuff going on throughout the book that kept me intrigued and not wanting to put my book down.