I truly enjoyed this book, even though I know little to nothing about football, which helps to bind the male and the female leads and makes, for the lack of a better term, a prop for the story. The love relationship is a difficult, May-December one as to their ages.

Shea, the main character, is in love with her best friend Lucy’s father Clive, called Coach, for being the famed small-town Walker University football coach. At the start of the story, we meet Coach, left a widow, with his wife Connie dying. Shea has also related well to Connie and she, too, is devastated when Connie dies. Although Shea has sexual and emotional relationships with Miller and Ryan, two young football players, Coach and Shea relate to each other mentally and emotionally better than they do with anyone else. Because of her crush on Coach, even if not admitting it to herself, Shea stays in town to work after graduating from the university, instead of looking for opportunities that could advance her career. She only accepts another job in a nearby town at the insistence and help of Coach. The true story is in how Shea and Coach overcome all the difficulties, internal and external, and find happiness with each other.

Through the events of the story, the author took what started as a crush by Shea toward Coach and turned it into platonic love, then later into two-sided true love. Toward the end of book, together with Shea, the reader sees Coach as a regular person with warts and good sides, although, viewed through Shea’s eyes, as a hero in the beginning.

This is a complicated, psychological love story, beautifully told, and to my surprise, it left an emotional imprint on me.

understanding the difficult and out-of-the-ordinary love relationships.

Coach as a character.

read this author's other books.

Emily Giffin is the author of six New York Times bestselling novels: Something Borrowed, Something Blue, Baby Proof, Love the One You’re With, Heart of the Matter, Where We Belong.

as difficult and seemingly unacceptable the core relationship of the story is, it is skillfully told with feeling. Plus, football lovers may appreciate it even better than me.

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Created Mar 27, 2015 at 4:33pm • Submit your own review...