Love the One You're with [Import] [Paperback]

Emily Giffin (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Orion (an Imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Ltd ); Export Ed edition (July 10, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0752875825
• ISBN-13: 978-0752875828
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (432 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,721,159 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Emily Giffin is the New York Times bestselling author of Something Borrowed, Something Blue, Baby Proof and Love The One You're With. She lives in Atlanta with her husband and three young children.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

154 of 178 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Andy's nice and all, but I would totally bang Leo., May 28, 2008

By 

Benjamin (ATLANTA, Gabon) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Love the One You're With (Hardcover)

I am an Emily Giffin fan. I am an unabashed, unashamed Emily Giffin fan. Her books pull me in the way a good date does, attracting me with a glossy exterior but keeping me interested by revealing a surprising depth.

LOVE THE ONE YOU'RE WITH contains the usual smart, charmed female protagonist living in a rather romanticized version of New York. But, in the first chapter, Giffin does something different. She introduces us to the main character's tempting dilemma - a charged encounter on the street with a hot, old boyfriend - before even telling us her name.

The character's name is Ellen. She's so analytical that she's practically obsessive compulsive. And she spends a lot of LOVE THE ONE YOU'RE WITH debating what she should - and should not - do about her cute, sweet husband Andy and her smoldering, brooding, dark and troubled ex-boyfriend Leo.

While Ellen's happy with Andy, she keeps thinking, "What if?"

This is the central problem of many a novel, but Giffin manages to hook the reader in with - dare I say it - some of the most erotic, intriguing flashbacks to Ellen's former relationship with Leo.

The husband Andy is a charming character, but, in Ellen's shoes, I would totally bang Leo. Giffin writes him as though he exudes sex through his eyes, through his pores. It's all very hard to resist.

And, it must be said, the inclusion of those scenes alongside many snarky references to my hometown of Atlanta kept me very entertained.

Strangely though, instead of flying all the way through it as I usually do, I flew through to Chapter Ten or so, then found myself taking a small break from it to concentrate on other things. Around the time that Ellen went to the charming, stylized Atlanta for the first time and then to photograph rock star Drake Watters, I was intrigued again.

After that, I was pulled back into the book every time that Ellen's sister Suzanne, a minor character with an edgy point-of-view, appeared on the page, though, for she was the voice I most related to in the long course of the book.

The core family of Ellen's in-laws at the center of the book, though, didn't always have my sympathies. In life, I tend to find those sorts of blessed, charmed, passive-aggressive, let's-put-on-a-smile types suspicious. Giffin makes was a very, very interesting move to have Ellen not just marry a man like Andy, but marry into her best friend and sister-in-law Margot's family. Giffin's excellent at exploring the dynamics of female friendship, and the Ellen-Margot friendship is satisfyingly complicated.

When Ellen is perplexed by her ex, she loses her chief confidante in Margot, for Margot's loyalty might go to her brother when news of what Ellen's secrets might come out.

The changing alliances of the marriage brings out Ellen's insecurity about her place, her feelings about her mother and how her own family must've felt intimidated and outmatched in comparison to the Grahams. Great, great stuff.

Of course, the protagonist Ellen might divide readers, for Ellen's in what many women would consider an ideal, supportive situation with a rich, successful and essentially sweet husband, loving in-laws, a nice house, a good career and such. Some readers might approach the book with the outset of "What the hell is she doing even thinking about infidelity when she's got it made?" But, once again, Giffin impresses by putting her protagonist squarely in the middle of what, at face value, seems like an indefensible position and manages to make her real, charming, vulnerable, reasonable and a heroine worthy of my attention as a reader and even my heart. Ellen, shockingly, considers infidelity for what feels like very valid reasons involving her heart and her choices.

It's a very smart book.

84 of 99 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Real love is about using the heart AND the head!, May 19, 2008

By 

Kharabella "Kharabella" (Somewhere in the midwest . . .) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Love the One You're With (Hardcover)

Not my favorite of Ms. Giffen's books, but interestingly, it is the book that I have been most able to relate to. I understand Ellen's need to understand and process, and ulimately resolve, the difference between the love she feels for her husband, and the love she feels/felt for her ex. I think that the book's realistic yet affirming take on love marriage and commitment is a welcome read for the so called "chick lit" genre.

At the same time, I lost patience with Ellen by page 75. By page 158, I was almost angry with her for taking so long to figure it out. By page 215, I simply vowed to finish the book by the end of the day, and get it over with. Lucky for me, the ending was sweet, and everyone that mattered was happy.

I think the problem is that there was not enough action and plot, and most of the characters -- the ones that I most wanted to learn about -- were kind of flat and one-dimensional. Overall, a good read, and I will buy Ms. Giffen's next book the week it comes out as well.

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Readers Beware, May 25, 2009

By 

Sophie (Middlebury, CT) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Love the One You're With (Paperback)

As a newlywed myself, I picked up this book from the library thinking that it would be good fun. Boy, was I ever mistaken!

As other reviewers have pointed out, the plot (if one could call it that) proceeds at a snail's pace. Instead of action, we are treated to interminable monologues and bloated flashbacks from our singularly obnoxious narrator, Ellen. I doubt that Ellen's self-centered musings would be of much interest to her own therapist, and for a reader looking for a fun summer escape they are Dull City indeed.

Besides the lack of plot, here are some other things that annoyed me to no end:

-The dialogue. Honestly, who talks like this? It was like a script for a really bad sitcom, replete with lazy pop culture references and groan-inducing puns that are supposed to pass for flirtatious banter. As Ellen fires off a round of questions, her husband says, "Whoa there, Inspector Gadget!" Lame. Ellen, meanwhile, frequently congratulates herself on her deadpanned quips and wisecracks, with are all without fail terrible and bristling with outdated sarcasm.

-The characters. Leo, Ellen's brooding ex, was a risibly superficial character study, like a cardboard cutout of "pretentious NY artist type." He didn't seem real-- none of them did. Not Oscar, the "somber Brit with a dry streak of humor" (stereotype), not Stella, the pastel-clad Atlanta matriarch, and not Andy, Ellen's achingly dull husband. Puppet shows have more substance! Ellen, as others have pointed out, was extremely unlikeable-- in fact, not since The Confederency of Dunces has there been so awful a protagonist. What an immature narcissist! At one point she gives Andy the finger behind his back. Nice.

-The places. Has Emily Giffin ever been to Pittsburgh? Or to New York, for that matter? The descriptions and evocations of the novel's settings relied heavily on stereotype. New York: greatest city in the world, late-night food deliveries, the "pulse" and "rhythym" of the big city, black clothes, brownstones, lofts, blah blah. And Pittsburgh: steel, salt of the earth folk, blue-collar. Atlanta: hot weather, golf, debutantes, pastels, sweet tea, "bless her heart." It's hard not to stereotype when you're writing about places you clearly know nothing about, so maybe Ms. Giffin ought to stick to her hometown for setting inspiration.

-The infidelity. For infidelity to work, so to speak, in a work of fiction, the pairing needs to be both believable and cataclysmically sexy (think Olivier Martinez and Diane Lane in "Unfaithful.") The reader needs to feel the protagonist's temptation and yearning. Otherwise, it is both egregiously unmoral and criminally dull. Ellen and Leo together were about as appealing as a rubberband and an old shoe.

It was also pretty annoying how the death of Ellen's mother was brought up every few paragraphs. In the book, it happened over twenty years ago. No, you don't ever "get over" a parent's death, but if you're still constantly reminded of it after two decades, then you really should be in therapy, NOT in a self-destructive love affair with a loser ex.