The One & Only (Emily Giffin)

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.

BEFORE READING
Just reading the reviews and seeing the others who hated all the Texas and football in this book makes me want to read it. I'm from Texas and in the South, football is like a second religion. A reviewer seemed pissed off by the books point that no one cares if you've been raped if the guy plays football, and sadly this really does occur in high school, college and pro-ball. The summary intrigued me but so did the other readers opinions. I can't wait to get my hands on this book.

AFTER READING
I wasn't sure what to expect from this book. I don't really run into books that talk about football in the Texas setting so much. And usually when you see girls like Shea, they don't seem 100% authentic. Girls like Shea who are that into football are usually in romance novels that have a little more emphasis on sex and seem only as a plot device to intense the male lead. However, Shea doesn't seem like that at all. Overall, I'm not sure how I felt about her as a character. Mainly it was her crush on her best friend's coach that got me. I really was psycho-analyzing her reasons for have feelings for Coach.

I figured it was because of her complicated relationship with her father. He is the impiety of guys who don't know what they want. He cheated on his first wife with Shea's mom, married her, had a kid with her then turned around and decided he wanted his first wife and daughter and left them. Coach was the only kind of father-figure in Shea's life so I figured that's why she liked him. I didn't expect for him to return her feelings and I definitely wasn't expecting for them to be together. Especially in light of how The One & Only begins. Lucy's mom and Coach's wife has just lost her battle to cancer and passed away as the novel opens. And this awakens something in Shea as she realizes she's going nowhere in life.

She stayed in town and went to Walker U, (the university that Coach coaches at, and the fictional rival of the University of Texas-Austin) works at Walker.

She's dating this boring but well-meaning loser, Miller and is doing nothing with her life. The funeral at the beginning serves as a catalyst to Shea questioning what she's done with her life and (annoyingly so) it's Coach who actually motivates a change. She quits her job at Walker U and starts working as a sports journalist at the Dallas Morning Post. She breaks up with Miller and starts dating the Dallas Cowboys (fictional) quarterback and Walker alum, Ryan James. Whoo! No more Tony Romo!

Anyway, he seemed nice enough in the beginning. Against her reservations, Shea sleeps over (haha, but doesn't sleep over) the night of their first date. Then pretty soon they're having sex. I was concerned because Ryan just ended a marriage and is keeping in touch with his wife. However, he's not cheating and if anyone is hiding their relationship, it's Shea. She doesn't want to be in the spotlight and she doesn't want Coach to know.

If there was any doubts about Coach and Shea's relationship in the beginning, Giffin did a good job of taking Shea's unrequited crush into genuine love between both characters. She actually developed a relationship past the platonic one that existed before between Shea and Coach that was real and legitimate. One of the things I really liked about this book is that Giffin has no problem breaking Shea's hero worship of Coach. Despite her argument against my (and her father's thoughts) that her feelings for Coach were just due to his role as a father figure in her life, her feelings for him weren't just because of him being who he was. However, it isn't because he's a stand-in father figure that she likes him, but Shea worships him a pure, sinless football god. For the two to truly be able to move forward in their relationship this has to be broken and Shea has to see him as a person.

I had a bunch of questions about the relationship. For a long time, I assumed that Coach wasn't going to return Shea's feelings and she'd end her relationship with Dallas Cowboys quarterback, Ryan Jame and end up alone. However, that's not what happened. So when I saw the direction the novel was going I started wondering how exactly this relationship would work. But Shea insisted that she didn't want kids. But I still wondered if Coach wanted to marry her one day, how exactly would that work? Being her best friends stepmom?

Which reminds me of another aspect about their relationship I kept wondering about: Lucy. Lucy's reaction to Shea and Coach's relationship was valid to me.

a) She was closer to her mother
b) and her mother has recently died
c) not to mention, Lucy can't picture her dad with anyone but her mother
d) ...let alone her own best friend
e) ...who already has a relationship with her father that Lucy's jealous of.

No wonder she was mad! No matter what Shea says, Coach was not a good father to Lucy. She didn't want to have anything to do with his football world and he didn't try to meet her on another level like she tried to with him. Throughout the entire novel this doesn't change. Lucy keeps trying and Coach doesn't care. He tries in his relationship with Shea and Lucy even allows the two to be together in the end. But in the last glimpse we see of them, Coach still isn't trying to create a better relationship with Lucy. He even forgets Lucy's birthday and hilariously enough, his granddaughter called him out on it.

I died!

I will admit, yes there's a lot of football in this book. Maybe a little too much for Giffin's target audience without some kind of glossary or clues. However, I only found myself skimming over one scene that had too much football for me.

One complaint I do have is the alleged rape is dealt very off-handedly and like an afterthought in the story. I still don't understand why Coach decided to bring it up especially since it wasn't really dealt with. It actually kind of pissed me off how Shea and Coach were so sure to dismiss the victim's story because they "'can't believe Ryan would even rape someone."

Are you serious? Do you know how many mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, friends, siblings and co-workers insisted that alleged rapists weren't rapists when they actually are. You weren't in the room therefore you don't know. Did she not remember just earlier in the book that she didn't think Ryan would ever grab on her and hurt her? Talk about Too Stupid To Live. That really pissed me off. That was some true ignorance that I don't know if the author meant to include in the story or not.

Otherwise this was a very interesting read and I enjoyed seeing my home (properly and realistically) portrayed in literature.

Splintered [Splintered #1]

the premise:

Splintered is a novel, the first of a series or a trilogy, I'm not sure. About Alyssa Gardner, one of the illegitimate American descendants of Alice Liddell, the girl who inspired Alice in Wonderland. However, ever since then, the female descendants of Alice all go crazy. They believe this is due to a curse bestowed upon Alice after she caused mistakes in Wonderland, but they couldn't be more wrong. When Alyssa decides to go to Wonderland in order to save her "crazy" mother from a electric shock treatment, she takes her best-friend-and-secret-crush, Jeb although part of her reason for going is to find the boy from her lost memories.

Yes, , it's another love triangle. 

Although I don't even believe that it should be such. Jeb is Alyssa's best friend and although there were times in the novel that he seemed a little sexist and annoyingly Edward-from-Twilight-y, he wasn't as bad as Morpheus. 

I cannot understand why people are Team Morpheus. The guy is not a good guy. He takes all the bad boy, mysterious guys from all other YA paranormal novels and turns them on their heads. He's a selfish, manipulative jerk who has been manipulating Alyssa and her family members for centuries and manipulates Alyssa throughout the novel until the end!

...But more about that later.

I thought the idea of the plot was semi-interesting, a girl who can hear bugs and flowers talk until I actually experienced it through the book and realized I thought it was quite stupid. Why would flowers or bugs say half of the things that Alyssa claimed she heard. But as the novel went on it made more sense.

Morpheus (whose name comes from the Greek God of Dreams) is the boy from Alice's childhood that her mother forced her to forget in her quest to save her from going to Wonderland. Only it turns out everything Alyssa and her past family members thought was wrong. This was actually one of the most annoying parts about this book. Every time we were told something, it turned out that it was wrong and we learned the "real story" ten more times! 

It turns out that the Alice who returned to Earth after her adventures in Wonderland isn't the real Alice Liddell. The real Alice had been locked up in a cage in Wonderland for 75 years while the Red Queen stole her life, married, had children and had grandchildren. Ha! How's that for an evil plan? Morpheus, who is the basically the Caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland wakes up as a moth, (he was turning from a caterpillar into a moth for apparently the last 75 years-who does that?) and switches the Red Queen and the real Alice's places for the last time. 

But when the Red Queen died, she forced him into making a promise that he has to abide by (another Wonderland tradition that is called Deathspeak) or he loses his soul. This is the reason that Morpheus manipulates the whole novel and Alyssa's existence. He trained her from when she was little (the only childhood he claims to have and this is the reason he claims to "love" Alyssa) until her mother caught wind of what was happening and forced him to leave her alone which works...until Alyssa comes looking for him. 

This is how the novel's events gets started. 

Everything that Alyssa does in the majority of the novel in Wonderland is to right Alice's wrongs (this is before she realizes that her Alice was not the real Alice) when she came to Wonderland the first time so that the crazy-curse and the bug and flower curse will disappear from their family. 

But it turns out that Morpheus is really training her to complete the tasks she has completed which is the only way she can become Queen-his Queen. At this point, the history we've come to believe is disputed again as we learn yet another version of what really happened when Alice came to Wonderland. I was confused and still don't understand what I learned. 

Anyway, Jeb dies and Alyssa uses a wish to wish that he had never came with her to Wonderland, the ghost of her crazy fake-Alice ancestor, Queen Red tries to take over her body but she fails, Morpheus seemingly dies and Alyssa goes home. There she and Jeb get together, Morpheus appears to say he's not dead and he hasn't given up on her and Alyssa's mom gets released from the crazy home.

Although I originally thought I would like this book, the writing in it was a little too disconnected for me and the novel was written in present-tense. But then the talking-flowers-and-the-bugs started to annoy me and so did the whole love triangle too. Alyssa should not even consider being with Morpheus, the guy is crazy and deceitful, but seeing how there is sequel coming out next year to this book called, Unhinged, I fear that the author will break the YA rule and stick Alyssa with Morpheus instead of Jeb. Or, actually since she met Morpheus as a kid then she met him first...

I'll probably read the next book in the series and finish it. I don't think it was a bad idea but the changing background story confused me immensely and I wasn't really invested in the main character due to the writing. Actually, and her own characteristics. I forgot that in the beginning of the novel, she steals almost $300 from Jeb's girlfriend and immediately describes it as borrowing the money and feels no remorse except once. That was completely unrealistic to me for the character we were supposed be sympathizing with. I didn't even get any sense of remorse when she starts making out with the girl (Taelor's) boyfriend, aka Jeb, later on in the book. 

But at least she's from Texas. :)