From Goodreads:
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.
Thoughtful, funny, and brilliantly observed, The One & Only is a luminous novel about finding your passion, following your heart, and, most of all, believing in something bigger than yourself . . . the one and only thing that truly makes life worth living.
My review:
The One and Only is definitely different from Emily Giffin’s other works, and so I had a hard time adjusting to it. Not that it was a bad book; I really enjoyed the main storyline and Shea’s battle to figure out what – and who – she really wants in life. What I didn’t like, and it totally doesn’t take away from how good the book is, was the football lingo and talk. I’m not a football fan in the very least, so a lot of the dialog in that regard bored me a little.
But still, I found myself not able to put the book down and read it all within a week. (Not bad when you have a toddler!) I couldn’t wait to learn which path Shea decided to take, though it was a little obvious to me which one she would ultimately end up on in the end.
So, in the end, did I LOVE love this book? Well sadly, not really. But did I enjoy reading it? Of course! Overall, I give it 4 stars out of 5. I just couldn’t relate to all the football talk, especially at the college level, but it was still a good story.