I've been a fan of Emily Giffin's books for several years now, and for the most part I've always loved her books or at the very least enjoyed them. However, I haven't been enjoying her most recent book Heart of the Matter very much at all. I started reading it in May when I got it as a gift from my mom for my 23rd birthday, and I'm currently only on page 96. When it comes to Emily Giffin's other books, Something Borrowed, Something Blue, Baby Proof, and Love the One You're With, they all got my interest right away, but with Heart of the Matter I still haven't been able to get truly into it even after having read 96 pages of the book.
My biggest problem with the book is that I don't like the two main characters of the book, Tessa and Valerie, very much at all. To me, Tessa comes across a boring housewife who doesn't seem to really have any interesting qualities as a character. She also doesn’t seem to love her husband, Nick, on a very passionate level. Tessa loves Nick, but it's clear that she's not madly in love with him. She also comes across as being very jealous of Nick's ability to get their oldest child, Ruby, to do what Tessa wants her to do when Tessa can't convince Ruby herself, which has already gotten really old with me a long time ago.
What bothers me about the character Valerie is that after being dealt countless disappointments in her lifetime she's become very cynical and unwilling to trust pretty much everyone in her life. I get that she’s had some unfortunate things that happened to her in the past, but I don’t think what happened to her in the past is bad enough for it to be a realistic enough of a reason to make her as cynical as she’s being portrayed. Part of the information is known about Valerie at this point in the book is that after having a falling out with some friends' in college she had a fling with a guy, which resulted in her getting pregnant. Her son, Charlie's, father is described as basically being a deadbeat slacker so when Valerie discovered that she was pregnant with Charlie she chose to raise Charlie on her own with her brother, Jason, serving as a father figure to Charlie. She also has a major self-loathing streak, which had already gotten really old with me by the end of the first chapter of the book that she was featured in. If her whole life had consisted of one bad thing happening to her after another, then I would think the explanation of why Valerie is so cynical was realistic. I think that Giffin’s writing of that aspect of Valerie was handled poorly, and she’s exaggerating the “tragic” nature of Valerie’s past way too much.
While I do not like Heart of the Matter very much so far, I have to give Emily Giffin credit for trying a new storytelling technique with this book, which allows the reader to examine the story from all angles. Each chapter alternates the point of view that the story is told from. (Chapter one is told from Tessa's point of view, chapter two is told from Valerie's point of view.) All of her other books have only been told from one character's point of few. The problem with using this technique for this book is that neither Tessa nor Valerie are very interesting characters. Tessa is just a very boring character, so each chapter told from her point of view is a complete and total snooze fest. I practically need to drink a bottle of 5 Hour Energy every time I read one of Tessa’s chapters just to get through it. Valerie's cynical view of the world has made each chapter told from her point of view so far one big, huge never-ending pity party. As for Valerie, I might as well have someone playing the violin every time I read one of Valerie’s chapters.
At the beginning of the book, Tessa and Valerie have never met and are living two completely separate lives. Their lives collide after Charlie is injured after falling into a camp fire one night when he's hanging out with some friends and Nick is brought in as the plastic surgeon who's in charge of treating his injuries from the fire. Even though I haven’t gotten very far into the story, I already know from having read reviews for the book on Amazon that Valerie and Nick end up sleeping together.
I’m not sure why, but Emily
Griffin’s book often involve her characters being unfaithful to the men that
they are either dating or married to in some shape or form. (Something Borrowed, Love the One You’re With, and now Heart of the Matter all involve her characters committing acts of
infidelity. I suppose Something Blue
involves infidelity a little bit too since it’s the aftermath of Something Borrowed.) Perhaps she has a
certain fascination with infidelity, I don’t know. So far the fact that three
of her books involve infidelity very heavily hasn’t bothered me, but I do hope
that some of the books that she writes in the future don’t involve infidelity
because if they do, then it might start to bother me.
One thing I do like about Heart of the Matter is that Dex and
Rachael from Something Borrowed are
featured in the book since Tessa is Dex’s sister, so the readers are able to
get a glimpse of what happened with their relationship after Something Borrowed ended. Although, Dex
and Rachael were featured briefly in Something
Blue when part of the ending of Something
Borrowed was told from Darcy’s point of view at the beginning of that book
and they were featured again in the epilogue of Something Blue. That’s one thing I like about Giffin’s books, she
often features characters from her past books so we can get a glimpse of what
happened with them after the book that they were the main focal point of ends.
One complaint that I have about Dex and Rachael’s appearance in Heart of the Matter is how nauseatingly
in love Giffin makes them out to be. It was obvious in Something Borrowed that they
were madly in love, but they never acted overbearingly in love like they do in
this book, so that just seemed strange to me. Plus, I thought it seemed kind
out of character for Rachael to brag to Tessa about the fact that she and Dex
have sex four times a week given the fact that she seemed pretty modest and
somewhat insecure in Something Borrowed.
Although, in Dex and Rachael’s defense Rachael did tell Tessa that they had
been trying to have another baby for a little over a year. When I was reading
that part of the book, I couldn’t help but picture Colin Egglesfield and
Ginnifer Goodwin as Dex and Rachael since they are playing them in the upcoming
movie adaptation of Something Borrowed.
In the past all of Giffin’s
book have dealt with some theme regarding the nature of relationships. Something Borrowed dealt with the
question of whether it’s worth it to sometimes sacrifice friendship for the
sake of finding love; Something Blue dealt
with the theme of redemption and people changing for the better; Baby Proof dealt with the question of
their being certain deal breakers in relationships such as deciding when you
get married that you won’t have kids only to have one spouse change their mind
down the road; Love the One You’re With dealt
with issue of what’s most important in a relationship being with someone who’s
very adventurous that you have very intense and passionate chemistry with or
being some who you might not have earth shattering sexual chemistry with, but
they are very stable, dependable and make you feel safe. I’m not sure yet
exactly what the theme of Heart of the
Matter is, mainly because the story is moving slower than a turtle can
walk.
Before I started reading Heart of the Matter my least favorite
book by Emily Giffin was Baby Proof
because I thought that once it reached the halfway point of the book, the story
began to move very slowly pretty much for the rest of book. At least Baby Proof was able to get me interested
in the story right away. Its only problem was that the story moved way too slow
once it got to the middle of the book.
Given how bored I’ve been
with reading Heart of the Matter, I
think I might go back to reading David Sedaris’ book Naked for a while since I was reading it before I got Heart of the Matter. At least with that
I’ll be able to read a little bit of that for a while and then go back to
reading Heart of the Matter if I want
to without having to worry about forgetting what’s happening in the book since Naked is a collection of short stories
about David Sedaris’ life. Also, it’s not like I’ll have to worry too much
about forgetting what’s happened so far in Heart
of the Matter since I’ve already done that several times when I had to read
books for school and I’ve haven’t forgotten what’s happened so far then either.
All in all, I give the first
96 pages of Heart of the Matter an
overall rating of C and I give Giffin an A for effort for trying a new
storytelling technique with this book.
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