Sisters Josie and Meredith have always had a fractious relationship, made more so by their brother Daniel's death when all three siblings were in their 20s. Fifteen years later, Meredith has reached a crisis in her marriage and her career, and still-single Josie is longing for a baby. As the anniversary of Daniel's death approaches, the sisters are forced to reconsider past choices and make decisions about the future. Emily Giffin deftly explores the complicated bonds of family, fraught with grief, in her eighth novel, First Comes Love.
Giffin (The One and Only) creates two sympathetic protagonists, telling their story in alternating chapters. Warmhearted, impulsive Josie, a first-grade teacher who struggles with having her ex-boyfriend's daughter as a student, is in many ways the opposite of reserved, cautious Meredith, a lawyer with one daughter and a meticulously planned life. Both women continue playing their lifelong roles of free spirit and model child, respectively, while secretly wishing for the chance to break out and do something different. Switching between narrators allows Giffin to explore the assumptions each sister makes about the other's actions, and the secrets they both carry about the night Daniel died.
Although it deals with grief and recovery, Giffin's narrative isn't a downer: it's told with a light touch and ends on a hopeful note. While Meredith and Josie don't resolve their differences (and what pair of sisters ever does?), Giffin brings them to a mutual understanding of the ways family can wound, frustrate and ultimately heal. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams