A Moving Story of Sisters, and a Perfect Book Club Pick
Sibling relationships of all kinds are complicated at best, coming by definition with a lifetime’s worth of family baggage. The relationships that should be closest are the ones most prone to stress, as Emily Giffin (author of bestsellers Something Borrowed, Where We Belong, and The One and Only) explores in new novel First Comes Love. The complicated bond between sisters Meredith and Josie, who share narration, forms the story’s crux, and the dual storytelling is crucial, giving us an intimate view of both sides of the long rift between them.
First Comes Love: A Novel
Hardcover $28.00
First Comes Love: A Novel
By Emily Giffin
Hardcover $28.00
From the start, we know theirs is not going to be an easy journey. The book opens with the death of their college student brother, Daniel, in a car crash that happens when he’s home for Christmas, with a beautiful woman he wants to marry in tow. It’s a tragedy whose effects ripple throughout the book. Meredith and Josie, despite their chalk and cheese personalities, share a caring bond—which their brother’s death begins to erode.
Good girl Meredith presents a poised face: she’s a successful Atlanta lawyer, and mother to a young daughter. In the wake of the accident, she was seemingly “saved” by her husband, Nolan, Daniel’s one-time best friend, with whom she purchased the family home from her now-divorced parents. Nolan also gives the family a tangible link to their lost son. It seems that all is well, but the murky tang of emotional obligation underpinning Meredith’s marriage won’t stay submerged forever.
Josie, on the other hand, has always been the wild one. Still single and harboring a broken heart from a previous relationship gone awry, Josie has a biological clock that’s not just ticking—it’s ringing an alarm bell. As a first-grade teacher and loving aunt, she’s coming to the conclusion that she’ll have to take matters into her own hands if she wants to become a mother.
Readers will be rooting for these sisters to find some common ground, mend their differences, and move forward together. The route they take together will be a bumpy one, requiring they both revisit their painful past and start to let go of old feelings of guilt and regret. Readers will love joining them for the ride.
From the start, we know theirs is not going to be an easy journey. The book opens with the death of their college student brother, Daniel, in a car crash that happens when he’s home for Christmas, with a beautiful woman he wants to marry in tow. It’s a tragedy whose effects ripple throughout the book. Meredith and Josie, despite their chalk and cheese personalities, share a caring bond—which their brother’s death begins to erode.
Good girl Meredith presents a poised face: she’s a successful Atlanta lawyer, and mother to a young daughter. In the wake of the accident, she was seemingly “saved” by her husband, Nolan, Daniel’s one-time best friend, with whom she purchased the family home from her now-divorced parents. Nolan also gives the family a tangible link to their lost son. It seems that all is well, but the murky tang of emotional obligation underpinning Meredith’s marriage won’t stay submerged forever.
Josie, on the other hand, has always been the wild one. Still single and harboring a broken heart from a previous relationship gone awry, Josie has a biological clock that’s not just ticking—it’s ringing an alarm bell. As a first-grade teacher and loving aunt, she’s coming to the conclusion that she’ll have to take matters into her own hands if she wants to become a mother.
Readers will be rooting for these sisters to find some common ground, mend their differences, and move forward together. The route they take together will be a bumpy one, requiring they both revisit their painful past and start to let go of old feelings of guilt and regret. Readers will love joining them for the ride.