(I feel like Emily Giffin could be a friend so I'm going to call her Emily) Emily does a great job in developing our main character - Shea Rigsby. Shea is thirty-three and never married, very devoted to her best friend Lucy, obsessed with Walker football and worships Walker's head coach and Lucy's father Coach Carr. When Lucy's mother dies, Shea starts to question the direction her life is going with her job, her loser boyfriend, and how there may be some "gray" areas in life. Shea's beloved college program Walker becomes under the investigation of NCAA about recruiting violations.
My new best friend (in my dreams) & author Emily takes us on lots of hilarious twists and some uncomfortable turns with this story in the background of high stakes Texas college football. I kept checking the author page to see if Emily was from Texas as she did a great job of describing the football atmosphere and Dallas! (One thing I think Emily did get wrong - there is no way a Dallas Cowboy quarterback could date anybody without the press finding out - but other than that - I felt it was pretty accurate!)
I don't think this is the typical chick lit novel - the main plot line is a little uncomfortable but life can be uncomfortable sometimes, right? This novel made me think and if my book club could get past all the football in this book (as not all my fellow readers all football fans), it could make a great discussion book. I'd give The One & Only 4 1/2 stars - not 5 cause I don't think some fans will like all the football references in the book. I loved & devoured this book! Great summer beach read!
From Amazon:
Emily Giffin, the beloved author of such New York Times bestselling 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.
But when an unexpected tragedy strikes the tight-knit Walker community, Shea’s comfortable world is upended, and she begins to wonder if the life she’s chosen is really enough for her. As she finally gives up her safety net to set out on an unexpected path, Shea discovers unsettling truths about the people and things she has always trusted most—and is forced to confront her deepest desires, fears, and secrets.
Thoughtful, funny, and brilliantly observed, The One & Only is a luminous novel about finding your passion, following your heart, and, most of all, believing in something bigger than yourself . . . the one and only thing that truly makes life worth living.
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