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Emily Giffin is an author with whose work I have a complex relationship. I think she's an amazing storyteller and that she has a knack for compelling dialogue and "smart lady soap opera" fiction. I often can't wait to read her books and have them delivered via Amazon Prime on the day of publication. I devour each new book in a day or so. I can't put Ms. Giffin's books down. And yet I often find myself highly conflicted. Something a character says doesn't hit me right, or a plot point seems... not quite right. 

I preordered Ms. Giffin's latest, All We Ever Wanted, as soon as I learned that it was set in Nashville. Now y'all know that Nashville is my happy place. I travel there as frequently as possible to recharge my creative batteries. I especially love the neighborhoods in the southern/ southwestern end of town; several of the main characters live in this area, in the exclusive Belle Meade neighborhood. I've made many fun trips to the East Nashville area for meals and festivals and events; this neighborhood plays a prominent role in the work as well. So, I kind of braced myself. Ms. Giffin grew up in suburban Illinois, practiced law in NYC and wrote in London before settling in Atlanta with her husband and kids. I always wonder if she has a bit of disdain for the South; the main character in Love the One You're With -- an otherwise highly compelling novel -- seemed to delight in subtly disparaging the South in a way that made me cringe. So, when I picked up a novel set in my favorite city by an author whom I know to be a compelling storyteller, I still had guarded expectations.

Let me just start off by saying that, from a storytelling perspective, All We Ever Wanted is fantastic. The book tells the story of two Nashville families, the Volpes and the Brownings. The wealthy Brownings, Kirk, Nina, and their son Finch, are firmly ensconced in Nashville's elite Belle Meade circles, while single father and carpenter Tom Volpe raises his daughter Lyla in a blue collar East Nashville setting. Finch and Lyla are classmates at a prestigious private school; their worlds are changed forever when a drunken photo of Lyla is posted to Finn's social media. The story is a fast-paced and heart-wrenching story of parental guilt, hidden secrets, and long-ago pain. Nina finds her small-town morals at to be at odds with her husband's desire to protect their son's Princeton admission at any cost, and she begins to address a long-suppressed assault that has impacted her entire adult life. Tom must confront his own class biases and the scars left by his tumultuous relationship with Lyla's mother, an alcoholic who abandoned them when Lyla was a toddler. This story plays out as every mother's nightmare: "How did my little baby become this person?" becomes "Is my child a psychopath?" in fairly short order. The work forces readers to think about the impact of class and privilege, the slippery slope between alcohol use and abuse, and the often-terrifying landscape of sexual consent and assault. It's a timely, nuanced, and tight narrative about the damage we can inflict on others and on ourselves, and it's a fantastic pool read.

And yet -- y'all knew there'd be a yet -- there were problems. Readers, I think I have to confess to y'all that the problem was with me and not with the book. I couldn't get past weird little details like "You send your kids to single sex-high schools like MBA or Harpeth if you live in Nashville" or "Nobody splits a glass of wine at Husk" or "A Methodist cop who's lived his entire life in Bristol would never drive home after drinking even a single beer." I didn't love the broad-sweeping message that you're kind of inherently vapid and materialistic if you live in Belle Meade and that you're in touch with core values if you hail from East Nashville; I've definitely met plenty whofolks who defy each of these stereotypes. And yet, as a writer and a serious reader, I know better than to allow myself to get mired in these little details. I know that if I set a novel anywhere other than the places I've lived -- Lexington, Louisville, Nashville, or the holler -- I couldn't pass this test. If I set a piece of fiction, the author of this work could likely find just as many nitpicking details that I got wrong. Ms. Giffin has been painstaking in her research of the city. So many things seem perfectly right, like pastries from Sweet 16th, which makes the best red velvet cake in East Nashville, or possibly anywhere in the world. Ultimately, she gets more "Luke Bryant popups in the Gulch" and "Buying jeans at Imogene + Willie" stories right than wrong, these little details make me sound like a pedantic malcontent, and the book is the best piece of chick lit that's been published so far in 2018.

I recommend All We Ever Wanted for anyone who loves Big Little Lies, Something Borrowed, or the early seasons of Nashville. Please chime in if you've read the book and have an opinion on the story, or if you've ever found yourself derailed by an author's tiny missteps in regard to locale and local customs!