I really like Emily Giffin. I’ve read most of her books. Really liked most of her books. I’ve read books by other authors because she endorsed them and liked those too. But…
The One & Only makes me angry. I’ll explain why but first a bit about the book.
Shea is a college town girl, who grew up loving one thing. Walker football. Her best friend was the coach’s daughter. She went to every game. She went to college at Walker and wrote about them for the school paper. She took a job with the college, in the sports department after graduation. Her life is ALL Walker football. Even her boyfriend at the start of the book used to play for Walker.
But someone influential in her life dies and she starts to think she should make some changes. So she cuts loose her slacker boyfriend, gets a new job writing for a Dallas paper, covering…can you guess…the Walker football team.
She gets a new boyfriend. Starts to repair her relationship with her own dad. Things are really looking up. Of course, the problem is she’s secretly in love with the coach of the Walker football team.
Fine, it’s trite, but ok. Let’s let it roll.
The problem for me is she lies to everyone. Her best friend, her mother, her boyfriend, throughout the whole book. She stays with the boyfriend even though she doesn’t love him, lies and says she does though, because hey, he’s a quarterback of a pro-team, used to play for Walker, and it’s not like Coach would ever like her anyway.
There’s been this trend in books I see on the pop shelves lately, female lead books. The women lie, cheat, use people – and then poof get what they want. I hate it. If books are meant to be our role models then all I am learning is that it’s ok to do whatever you want, to treat people however you want, in the last 2 pages of the book an invisible magic fairy will give you everything you ever dreamed of. I’m tired of it. What happened to actually working for what you want? Women protest for equal rights and then publish books where the man gives the woman everything she wants. The job at the Dallas paper, gift from Coach. And when she gets fired from that job Daddy offers more prestigious jobs.
I won’t give away the absolute end but suffice to say it’s enough to make you want to throw your kindle.
℘℘ – Two Pages. I finished it but I’m angry as all hell. And I might not read any more Emily Giffin if this is the way her books are going to go now.
T.A. Henry 
I did not read this book. But lately I’ve noticed that more and more girls want to depend on men. Perhaps this is the opposite process of feminism. It is sad.
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