Author: Emily Giffin
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Genre: Fiction, Romance
Pages: 368
Rating: 3 Stars
Oy vey, this book. I'vw yet to make the jump into the "BookTube world" but this book really makes me want to start. I felt so many different emotions while reading this book, I mostly bounced between anger and sadness with the occasional happy moments.
Heart of the Matter, is told through two different womens' stories, Tessa and Valerie. Tessa is the wife of an extremely prestigious pediatric plastic surgeon and Valerie is the mother of a six year old boy who is badly burned one night at a birthday party. The two's lives begin to quickly intertwine without them even knowing, well at least without Tessa even knowing. Valerie is well aware of what is going on but her heart is too invested to do the right thing.
Emily Giffin is also the author of Something Borrowed, which had the same kind of plot line with a slightly different twist. I was a little turned off to the book once I realized the storyline and saw the resemblance between the two but kept reading. I honestly don't know how I feel about this book, as a whole I thought it was very intriguing, making it a good story but I found it really unsettling. I hated the characters back and forth throughout the entire thing. At times I even felt sympathetic towards Nick because he just seemed so conflicted but towards the middle of the book I stopped feeling sorry for him. I don't know which was my least favorite character between Nick and Valerie. Nick because he was the cheater or Valerie because she knew he was married and would consciously think about what she was doing and the effect it could have on his children and family but went along with it anyway.
By the middle of the book I was completely Team Tessa. At times she was whiney and annoying causing me to sympathize with Nick but she was just a wife trying to get the attention of her husband who she could tell had drifted from her. It's hard to be annoyed with that because you just feel so sorry for her, especially knowing what Nick is actually doing way before she catches on. I understand her decision at the end and I actually found myself hoping she would make that decision but it still left me slightly unsettled.
The story itself was very predictable. Happily married couple, then comes the single mom with the hurt little boy who swoons over the gorgeous plastic surgeon who is taking care of her son, then martial problems/affair start, wife's nosey friends catch husband, the affair ends, then they try to piece the marriage back together. Even though it was very predictable and the characters were so frustrating at times, it was still a good read (minus feeling unsettled and a little annoyed at the ending).
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