Book Review – Where We Belong

In Where We Belong Emily Giffin introduces us to 36 year old Marian Caldwell and 18 year old Kirby Rose. Marian is a television producer living in New York City ready for her boss/boyfriend to propose and start their life together full-time. Kirby has just turned 18, is in her senior year of high school, and is not sure she wants to attend college as her parents hope. The story reveals how these two women are connected and takes the reader on an exploration of their lives and what results from their meeting. I found myself much more invested in Kirby than Marian.  I kept reading the book to find out how things worked out for Kirby and would be interested to read another book that follows her into the future. I’ve not read Giffin before so I cannot compare this book to any of her others. I know her name and recognize the cover of her books because of the way her publisher has kept the designs consistent. I read an excerpt from this novel that was attached to a short story that was available for free download on Amazon to my Kindle. I downloaded the short story, but was more entertained by the excerpt from this novel. When I finished the excerpt I turned off my Kindle and logged into my local library website. The book was not released yet, so I put myself on the reserve list. The book was a quick read and the last four to five chapters kept me turning the pages to find out the ending. The book was entertaining and as my first Giffin book, I may give her another try in the future.

The book is available from Macmillan and is available in audiobook format as well.  To hear an audio clip click here:

http://media.us.macmillan.com/video/olmk/macmillanaudio/WhereWeBelong.mp3. 

This is the same excerpt that I read on my Kindle download that hooked me to get the book to read in the first place. If you have difficulty getting the clip to load from the blog, copy and paste the link to your browser.

Let me know what you think.