Emily Giffin

I invested a lot of my free time this summer into one woman: Emily Giffin.  And honestly I'm not quite sure how I feel about it.  Emily Giffin is the author who penned Something Borrowed (that inspired this movie) and Something Blue.  These two books found their way into my beach bag this summer and I saw the movie with a friend of mine.


Honestly?  I did not like either the book or movie version of Something Borrowed.  I did, however, LOVE Something Blue.  Let me explain.


Both of these books are about long-time best friends Rachel and Darcy.  Rachel is bookish and smart, but she is not assertive and lets people walk all over her.  Darcy is vivacious and selfish and takes advantage of Rachel's insecurity.  Rachel is a lawyer (actually so is Ms. Giffin, the law school bits were super realistic).  In law school Rachel meets Dex, develops a crush on him, and then introduces him to Darcy.  Darcy then falls in love with Dex and they get engaged (this is all explained very, very early on in the book, so no spoilers here!).  


At Rachel's thirtieth birthday party, Darcy gets crazy drunk and steals the show (again).  So Rachel sleeps with Dex.  


My biggest problem with this book was this: yes, Darcy was terrible.  She was an awful, self-centered friend.  But she didn't do anything that would justify her fiance cheating on her with her best friend.  I didn't find it to be quite the moral dilemma that I think Ms. Giffin was hoping for.


Now the movie.  Ok, so the story line carried over which I already didn't care for.  My other big problem with the movie was casting.  The guy that played Dex was crazy hot.  But my problem was that John Krasinski (also known as Jim Halpert) played Rachel's other close friend, Ethan.  There are few men that I love more than Jim Halpert so I had a really hard time rooting for Rachel and Dex to get together as I was really rooting for Rachel and Ethan to live happily ever after.  


I was glad to be done with Emily Giffin, but then THREE of my friends told me that I had to read Something Blue.  I'm glad I listened.  As awful as I thought Something Borrowed was, I loved Something Blue.  Where Something Borrowed is written from Rachel's perspective, this book is told by Darcy.  Which I liked a lot more than I expected.


At the end of Something Borrowed some sh!t gets real.  The sequel picks up where it left off.  Its really about Darcy growing up and becoming a good, honest human being.  While there's some sort of endearing quality about Darcy, this book is also missing the moral dilemma that misses the mark.  


So basically, read Something Borrowed because you need to read Something Blue and quite frankly the sequel won't make as much sense without reading the first book.  Happy reading!

WHAT'S CURRENTLY ON YOUR NIGHTSTAND?

DO YOU READ BOOKS  YOUR FRIENDS RECOMMEND?

DO YOU LOVE JIM HALPERT TOO???