The first book I read by Laura Dave was "The Last Thing he Told me." I really enjoyed that one and all her other books have been quite a different style to that one.
While on a road trip with her fiance, Emmy leaves him. She finds refuge in the town they had stopped in and three years later, she is still there, living a small life.
When she returns to NYC for her brother's wedding, she is forced to face some of the decisions she has made in the last 3 years. She also learns that her brother is contemplating calling off his own wedding. Emmy spends the weekend trying to face her past, learn lessons and move on all while trying to help her brother make decisions about his own future.

ATY 2024 - a second book that fits your favourite prompt (6+ words in the title)

I started this book after my husband went to bed. I read the first 3 pages and knew I'd be up until I was finished.

I'm not sure why it grabbed me so much. I'm old - happily married for 20+ years - but I guess it's about the way you make choices. Or have choices made for you. Or take the easy, people pleasing way. Or find a way to do what you really want to do. Maybe I'm looking at the struggles my kids are having in finding their ways.

Regardless, I really enjoyed this book but I don't have to go and put everything this author has ever written on my TBR list because I did that after reading "The Last Thing He Told Me" last year.

I recently became a Laura Dave fan girl after reading Eight Hundred Grapes. I believe this was her first novel and I can definitely see her development as a writer between this first book and her latest The Last Thing He Told Me. All of her books have this beautiful contemplative feel where you as a reader ponder your place within your own small universe and the impact of your decisions on the people around you. I see all of that in this book but not as fully developed as her later works.

3 ⭐️

Potentially another unpopular opinion

This feels like a tricky one to review because I liked the storyline but the writing often felt disjointed.

I was interested enough in the story to keep reading because I kept hoping something would happen that really drew me in. I was wrong. Despite that I was also often annoyed at how it was being wrote. There was just nothing to really engage the reader.

Writing this I wonder why I finished it and gave it 3 stars haha. I didn’t hate it. I just nothinged it I suppose

Thoughts from back in the day in 2019...
Overall short read. It’s not too bad, but not at all crazy memorable. Maybe a bit weird to read a book on two marriages not happening while I’m trying to plan a wedding. Plus not future husbands cheating on their future wives. (2021 Nov. edit: I have absolutely no clue what I meant to mean by this last sentence.)

Also am reading the book Not Just Friends so a bit psychoanalyzing the story. I was waiting for some big personal reveal at the end and it sorta didn’t happen. The main character’s mom put it in pretty simple terms that no matter the choice she’d have made she’d have lived a good life and would have been happy. The point is to make a choice and then go forth and enjoy it. Quit worrying about which choice will lead to the greatest happiness.

This started out super strong for me and I was flying through it. About halfway through I realized how surface level a lot of the writing, plot, characters, and pithy statements ultimately were and would continue to be. The last 15 or so pages caught my interest (honestly I’m more intrigued by Josh and Emmy’s mom and her backstory), but I finished the book mostly rolling my eyes.

TL;DR: Too many pithy statements, overall cute reminder to not get hung up on the past, the importance of making choices, kind of an eye roller.

This was funny and really well-written for a light read (aka, realistic, yet not depressing). I really loved the anecdote about the offshore fisherman's girlfriend who would watch for her boyfriend as he came back into port, and then run away after she caught his eye. That way, she could leave him for a change. I should mention that I listened to this one on my commute, instead of reading it. My only beef is that while the person reading the book made an attempt to differentiate between the characters, the character from Georgia sounded just like the character from Arkansas, who sounded just like the character from Texas, who sounded just like Rosalynn Carter.

I am taken with this author’s ability to write a captivating story – one that grabs me from the very first chapter and keeps me turning pages until the end.

Although insightful, this story denies readers a behind the scenes look at the one happy, warm, long term relationship anchoring the main characters and giving them hope. The first meeting of Emmy’s parents is explored and wisdom extracted from the choice the mother made, so many years before, to move in a particular direction (building a life with the man she chose to marry), but what is never shown are all of the times when, inevitably, commitment enabled this couple to stick it out through decades of ups and downs.

Since this invisible truth isn’t acknowledged or explored, the thrust of the story offers personal happiness as the force that should drive a person’s life, the courage to choose and to move towards that which offers the best chance for this happiness a quality that is illustrated and encouraged. The story is wonderful, but fails to acknowledge the inevitable presence of good times and bad times in all long term relationships, and the vital role of commitment in any lifelong partnership.

Quick read. Enjoyed the unexpected story line and life lessons the characters learned about themselves along the way. Second book I’ve read by this author and I appreciate how her characters are devoted to family and have deep roots even with the characters are uprooted in life and lost. The siblings are close and confide in each other and fight and yet have each others best interest in mind, I can relate to that and appreciate her books for that reason.

Terrible writing style, weak characters, too many useless bits not relating to the story, amature descriptions of people and places

A solid three stars. I liked it. I liked some characters more than others, I liked the story okay - taking place for the most part over a short period of time.

I realize it's a bit of a stretch, but I'm going to count this for the 2018 PopSugar Reading Challenge as a book set on Halloween. The actual book isn't but key characters have key relationships that started on Halloween. So . . . there. It's my reading challenge and I'll do what I want. ;)

The prologue seemed promising, along with these moments in Part One: - "Here's the thing about going home again. You don't always know what you'll remember." (13)
- "And suddenly I felt oddly aware of how clear the sky was... how everything was bright and fluid even while it was happening--already existing closer to memory than reality." (13)

Then some pages later I realized we were moving downhill. Dave attempts to add dimension to the story with repetition, an integration of the history of wedding traditions and superstitions, and failed metaphors and symbolism. Instead we have a wordy surface-level account of an irritating protagonist who thinks she's more insightful than she is. Because the entire book is a verbal regurgitation of what confusion and growing up feels like, the discerning reader never connects with any real emotion. Dave chose to separate the book into five parts which made no sense other than underlining her inability to delve deeper.

The narrator incriminates herself (and sums up my sentiment toward the book) in this line:
"And I wish--I really wish--that I could begin to describe what it was like seeing her being seen that way by him." (196)

I want to note that this was a book club pick... the only reason I decided to finish.