All We Ever Wanted by Emily Giffin

This was my introduction to Ms. Griffin’s work, and I am pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed most of this one. Usually I think books with trite titles will be predictable and/or saccharine sweet, but this one has well-developed characters and a believable twist near the end (though what happens at the very end is maddening, but feels true).

The author has also written some chick lit/love stories, though I think this book leans toward the shelves in the bookstore that just say, “fiction.” In a nutshell, the story focuses on two families—one lower middle-class and the other upper class. The wealthy son of one family attends private school with the middle-class daughter of the other family. At a party one night, the middle-class daughter, Lila, gets drunk and wakes the next day to learn that Finch, the rich kid, has a photo of her on his phone. The photo has been circulated around to nearly everyone at their prep school, and it shows her lying around semi-conscious with her boob out. There’s a racist caption attached to the pic that says something about her getting her green card (She’s part Brazilian).

The son tries to downplay the incident, and his father does the same. The mother, Nina, is the only one of the three of them who is appropriately appalled. The dad even goes so far as to attempt to pay the girl’s father off with $15,000 because he’s afraid his son will be kicked out of school and lose his place in the Ivy League.

One thing I enjoyed about the book was the subject matter. It feels all too familiar and real. I don’t like where the story took Finch, but I won’t spoil that for you here. I do like that the story is told in first person from three different narrators: Nina, Lila, and Tom (Lila’s dad). The voices are pretty distinct, and I enjoyed putting myself in each of the character’s shoes. For instance, what would I do if Lila were my daughter? How would I react at the end if Finch were my son?

I will look for more of Emily Giffin’s books.