The One & Only

by Emily Giffin

[Leah]

If you read the site regularly (and if you don’t, why do you not? Ha, I am, of course, joking) you’ll know that I am a huge fan of Emily Giffin. I credit Something Borrowed as my favourite book, ever. What you will also hear me say is that I haven’t really found that other Giffin books have lived up to her first two novels – Baby Proof, Love The One You’re With, Heart of The Matter only received a three out of five stars for me, but I will always, always buy a new Emily Giffin novel simply because, even if I don’t enjoy her novels as much as Something Borrowed and Something Blue, I always look forward to any new books she releases, and I think she is a stellar, very clever writer. The only novel of hers I haven’t yet read is Where We Belong, but I do have the novel to read. What amazes me the most is how Giffin has developed as a writer over the years, which I’ve only just noticed having finished The One & Only. Her novels have matured, as she has matured as a writer, and I’m only just coming to appreciate that now.

I went into The One & Only a little bit blind – I read the synopsis, sure, but it didn’t really matter what it was about because I was going to read it regardless because it had Emily’s name on the cover. She could write about paint charts and I’d read it. She’s one of those authors for me, who you buy regardless. So I was very surprised that The One & Only is all about college football. Now, I’m British, and the only football I like is the variety people in America call soccer. I ADORE that kind of football. I watch it every week, in the same way that Shea and Coach Carr watch American College Football, that kind of devotion. Absolute. Now I’m not really au fait on American football. I try to watch the Super Bowl, but it’s just so confusing with all the different plays and what have you and it just seems so bloody complicated. Overly complicated. So, it stands to reason I was a wee bit nervous on learning The One & Only is all about football (the second one I’ve read this year, also set in Texas, the first being All Lined Up by Cora Carmack) and while it’s definitely not to my taste, and Shea and Coach Carr haven’t exactly changed my mind, I do now appreciate football a little more than I did. Sure, it still confuses the life out of me, but Shea and Coach Carr’s passion is the type of passion I carry (most of the time) for Manchester United and I can appreciate somebody else’s passion and enjoy reading about it, as I did here.

The One & Only is a very character focused novel – the plot itself is all about being made to go out of your comfort zone; after the death of Coach Carr’s wife, Connie, Shea feels restless – in her relationship with Miller, in her job at Walker, and she decides to turn things around, and try and make herself happy. The plot is really something that just keeps you turning the pages, but it’s the characters who really make this novel come to life, which I find strange to say as there aren’t that many characters in the novel. It’s a very select few – Shea, and her family, the Carr family, including Shea’s best friend Lucy, and a couple of other characters who Shea works with or interacts with along with Miller, the boyfriend who soon becomes ex, and Ryan James, star NFL player, who Shea begins to date. But you can close it in even furter, because to me, this novel was about two people – Shea and Coach Carr. It’s not exactly clear from the start what kind of relationship they had – it’s obvious that Shea hero-worships Coach Carr a little bit in the way I would hero-worship Sir Alex Ferguson if I knew him personally. Coach Carr is the very definition of someone to worship – respected by all at Walker, where he’s head coach, known for being clean, and good, and all that’s right with college football, and he and Shea have this really easy going relationship. I don’t know how, but it works, and it was something that really drew me in, right from the start. Because, as I said, you do not know where it’s going, it seems like a father/daughter kind of bond, but soon it’s more than that, and while I thought I might have found that weird, instead I embraced it, and was eager to see where exactly the novel was heading.

The One & Only hit all the right notes for me. When I had to put the novel down to sleep, I was bereft, and all I wanted to do was just keep reading, just keep devouring the novel and see where it was all going to go. Football is a very, very strong feature of the novel and I can say that as someone who really doesn’t understand American football, I still found I could follow the novel very well, it didn’t stop my liking of the novel one bit. If you’re not a fan, I wouldn’t let it put you off because through Shea and Coach Carr’s enthuasiam you will be able to get past the whole football theme; when something is someone’s life, it’s very easy to get caught up in the moment, and that no more than any other rings true at the end of the novel. I was so caught up in the ending, in the fast paced frenzy, that I almost missed the most important moral of the story, and which you will have to read for yourself to figure out. There are quite a few quotable lines towards the end of The One & Only, but that one right at the end… Shea hit the nail on the head, it was almost as if she had been given Professor Snape’s truth serum because it all became crystal clear to her – really it’s something all sports fans should know, I know I do. I was very glad Shea caught on, almost before it was too late (Giffin knows how to make a girl sweat).

It might have taken me 5 novels to really understand just how good a writer Giffin is (I mean, I knew it after reading Something Borrowed, but I sort of let my love for Something Borrowed/Something Blue clog my love for her others books), but she is a stellar writer. Probably one of the best around, of any genre. Only now having finished The One & Only can I really see how far she’s come with her seven novels. Far. At least to me, that’s how I personally feel and I feel with The One & Only that she’s absolutely hit her mark. I’m going to be very clunky and cliched when I say that it’s like she scored a touchdown (RIGHT? RIGHT? See, I can do football analogies), but not any touchdown but the winning one that wins… er, the NFL? Do they have a name for that trophy? See, ruined my analogy. Gee. In my footballing/soccer terms it would like winning the Premier League. I absolutely adored this book. I loved Shea so much, she’s so real, so honest, and her relationship with Coach Carr perhaps trumps how I felt about Rachel and Dex’s relationship in Something Borrowed. It was that profound, that right. If you’d asked me right before I started if I was confortable about a potential relationship between a thirty-something and a fifty-something I would have been derisive, grossed out, but that’s the beauty of Giffin’s writing, she made it seem so effortlessly easy, so simple and perfect. Bravo, Emily, I LOVED The One & Only.