Sign up for our newsletters to receive our Best of 2024 ezine!

Book Summary and Reviews of All We Ever Wanted by Emily Giffin

All We Ever Wanted by Emily Giffin

All We Ever Wanted

by Emily Giffin

  • Critics' Consensus (0):
  • Readers' Rating (2):
  • Published:
  • Jun 2018, 352 pages
  • Rate this book

About this book

Book Summary

In the riveting new novel from the #1 bestselling author of Something Borrowed and First Comes Love, three very different people must choose between their families and their most deeply held values...

Nina Browning is living the good life after marrying into Nashville's elite. More recently, her husband made a fortune selling his tech business, and their adored son has been accepted to Princeton. 

Yet sometimes the middle-class small-town girl in Nina wonders if she's strayed from the person she once was.

Tom Volpe is a single dad working multiple jobs while struggling to raise his headstrong daughter, Lyla. His road has been lonely, long, and hard, but he finally starts to relax after Lyla earns a scholarship to Windsor Academy, Nashville's most prestigious private school.

Amid so much wealth and privilege, Lyla doesn't always fit in - and her overprotective father doesn't help - but in most ways, she's a typical teenaged girl, happy and thriving.

Then, one photograph, snapped in a drunken moment at a party, changes everything. As the image spreads like wildfire, the Windsor community is instantly polarized, buzzing with controversy and assigning blame.

At the heart of the lies and scandal, Tom, Nina, and Lyla are forced together - all questioning their closest relationships, asking themselves who they really are, and searching for the courage to live a life of true meaning.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Reviews

Media Reviews

"Starred Review. Stellar ... an excellent page-turning story ... a nuanced, thoughtful take on family and social dynamics." - Publishers Weekly

"A compelling portrait of a woman facing the difficult limits of love." - Kirkus

"Using the points of view of Nina, Lyla (the girl in the photograph), and Lyla's father, Tom, Giffin weaves a story of what parents will do to protect their children, even if it's from themselves. But the story lacks authenticity and sincerity. The author's attempts to call out white privilege fall a little flat, which may disappoint new readers, though longtime fans will appreciate her beach-read style exploration of serious issues." - Booklist

"A timely and absorbing portrait of the complexities of modern life. This is Emily Giffin at her very best." - Kristin Hannah

"Riveting and poignant, Emily Giffin's latest novel paints an impossible dilemma that will make readers ponder hard questions about loyalty and love. I was captivated by every page." - Harlan Coben

"A compelling, fascinating story told through blue-ribbon dialogue and the dual gifts of intelligence and goodness. I loved this novel." - Elinor Lipman

This information about All We Ever Wanted was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Reader Reviews

Write your own reviewwrite your own review

Anl

Original plot
Spellbinding page turner exposes different types of folks who question the paths their lives have taken, and the difficulty of facing negative realities.

Anl

Highly recommended
Thoroughly enjoyed this book. Easy to read, interesting plot, good characters. Enough twists and turns to keep your interest. And no unnecessary hard to believe plot twists.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Author Information

Emily Giffin Author Biography

Emily Giffin is the New York Times bestselling author of Something Borrowed (which was also made into a movie and released in May 2011), Something Blue, Baby Proof and Love The One You're With. She lives in Atlanta with her husband and three young children. Her eighth novel is First Comes Love (2016).

Link to Emily Giffin's Website

Other books by Emily Giffin at BookBrowse
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

More Recommendations

Readers Also Browsed . . .

more literary fiction...

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket: The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern
    The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern
    by Lynda Cohen Loigman
    Lynda Cohen Loigman's delightful novel The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern opens in 1987. The titular ...
  • Book Jacket: Small Rain
    Small Rain
    by Garth Greenwell
    At the beginning of Garth Greenwell's novel Small Rain, the protagonist, an unnamed poet in his ...
  • Book Jacket: Daughters of Shandong
    Daughters of Shandong
    by Eve J. Chung
    Daughters of Shandong is the debut novel of Eve J. Chung, a human rights lawyer living in New York. ...
  • Book Jacket: The Women
    The Women
    by Kristin Hannah
    Kristin Hannah's latest historical epic, The Women, is a story of how a war shaped a generation ...

BookBrowse Book Club

Book Jacket
In Our Midst
by Nancy Jensen
In Our Midst follows a German immigrant family’s fight for freedom after their internment post–Pearl Harbor.
Who Said...

I always find it more difficult to say the things I mean than the things I don't.

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Big Holiday Wordplay 2024

Enter Now

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.