Normally, I love Emily Giffin's books, and I wanted to love this one. It starts off as an interesting read but about halfway through I was struggling to continue. I read on hoping it would rebound and end on a good note, but for me, it didn't. Thanks to NetGalley and Ballantine Books for providing me with an ARC version in exchange for an honest review.

I received this book free of charge from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

I don’t know. Reading this, the plot line seemed really familiar to me, like I’ve read this story elsewhere. Lots of crazy things that just “had to happen” in order for the story to come together. Seemed a little unrealistic. And the 9/11 angle was...odd?

If you put all of that aside and just focus on finding an entertaining story to read, this might work. I might suggest this to friends who have no other options, but it’s definitely not a book that immediately goes to the top of my to be read pile.

Probably 2.75 stars, but I’ll run up to 3.

I struggled with this title. I was uncomfortable with the 9/11 setting and frankly uncomfortable with what Emily Giffin has posted online recently.

The Lies That Bind is one of the best books that I've read this year! The plot is so suspenseful and the ending completely blew me away!

Emily Giffin is a national treasure. Her bestselling books are something I look forward to every two years, and THE LIES THAT BIND lives up to that anticipation and more. In many ways, this book feels like a callback to the SOMETHING BORROWED and SOMETHING BLUE books which made her famous, and not just for a cameo here and there. The questions of right and wrong, morality and immorality, fate and predestination are found in this novel as well, all with a backdrop of nostalgic early 00's NYC. Sure to be another bestseller, and I find myself already looking forward to two years from now, when we can hopefully expect Giffin's next page turner!

Girl and boy break up. Girl goes to bar to feel sorry for herself. Girl meets new boy, a boy who is too good to be true.

TRAGEDY STRIKES.

Ugh. I should have known better. I HATE when things like 9-11 are used as a plot device. It's a cheap ploy for emotion and a quick way to insert some sort of relevance in 'modern' settings. I hate it so, SO much.

This was ....fine. And I'm sure, much like her other books, Emily Griffin has a best seller in her hands. That said, I would never buy this book.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read and review this book.

I really wanted to like this book and did for most of the plot. However, I started to hate the characters, ugh Grant, and Cecily has to be one of the worst female characters I've read in a long time.

This book was good in that I wanted to keep reading it - but the twists were contrived and predictable.

As Cecily Gardner is sitting alone in a bar thinking about calling the guy she broke up with, a handsome stranger walks up and says “Don’t do it—you’ll regret it.”. She listens to him, he buys her a drink and they end up together at the end of the night. They spend the next several months falling in love and everything is perfect until 9/11 when he goes missng. Weeks later when she finds a missing poster with his picture on it she realizes she is not the only one looking for him and and calls the number, only to find out Grant wasn't who he seemed to be after all.
I loved this book. I am a huge fan of this author's books and this one may be my new favorite. I did not want to put it down. This will make an excellent beach read.

So so so many lies! Cecily wanders out one night in 2001, sad about her breakup with Matthew, and meets Grant in a bar. They fall fast and hard for one another but don't have sex. She even travels to London with her friend Scottie to see Grant and his brother, who is in an ALS trial there. Then Grant surprises her when he comes back with a night of passion- on 10 September. Trigger warning for those who still hurt from 9/11-Giffin clearly rewatched and quotes some of the TV coverage. Grant was in the World Trade Center, Cecily is devastated, and then she finds out he didn't tell her the truth. When Matthew comes back into her life, Cecily has to make a choice. There are lots of twists here, some of which are implausible (especially the one at the end) but they come at junctures where you're about to toss this over so you'll keep reading to find out what happens. Honestly, Grant is pretty unlikable once you know it all and I wasn't too pleased with Cecily either but that's what made them realistic characters. Giffin is taking a lot of hits on line and in her reviews for her comments about the Duchess. If you can ignore that, this is a classic Giffin plot. It's a fast, page turning read (admittedly, I didn't read the pages re 9/11) with a conflicted protagonist, two men, and well, no spoilers. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. Her fans, of which I have been one, know what to expect. Others who are new, give it a try.

I did not enjoy this book which is really disappointing because I did enjoy this author's previous works. It feels contrived and showy in a way that doesn't relate to me at all and I was very disappointed. There was no depth to this book. What I especially did not enjoy was that it felt like an important, tragic, historical time in our lives was used to manipulate a story just for the sake of being able to use it as a plot device rather than injecting any kind of emotional depth or growth or education. And really that's how the whole book felt to me: flat and stunted. It was surface level.

Ms Giffin does it again, with this heartwarming & engaging tale that pulls you in from page 1. She leaves us flipping pages, excited yet also sad - knowing the end is approaching.
Give this a read, y’all - it’s great!

I have read some of Emily Griffin’s prior books and I was in the mood for an easy going story. I have noticed from prior reviews that some reader’s loved this book and others gave it only one star. I am right in the middle on this one. The book certainly held my interest. I would classify it as a romance and there were a few surprises and some quite predictable outcomes. If you are looking for a light summer book, this one is a good choice.
I received an ARC from Netgalley and the publisher. This is my unbiased review.

I had a hard time loving this whole book. There were pieces of it I couldn't stop reading, but then there were parts I didn't care for. This book follows Cecily, a young reporter in NYC who is unsatisfied with her life. She just broke up with the man she thought she would marry and is having a hard time moving on. That is until the night she decides to go to the bar and meets Grant, a man of mystery as they don't even share their names with each other until the morning. Cecily becomes enthralled with Grant, someone she desperately wants to get to know, but Grant keeps her at arms length often referring to them as just friends. It isn't until 9/11 that Cecily's life will change forever.

Having read this, I found it hard to like the main character Cecily. I was able to tell that she was not making informative decisions and wrapped herself into so many bad decisions. Some of her emotions seems forced or unrealistic. If you try this book, give it a chance until 9/11 happens. The beginning is slow, but the plot will pick up after 9/11.

I was excited to see that Emily Giffin has a new book coming out and couldn't wait to get my hands on a copy! But wow, this book was sad and depressing. I love the idea of finding a love interest in a totally random encounter, but then possibly losing that same person during 9/11 was so sad. I felt bad for Cecily, but never really cared for her throughout any of the book. I also thought that some of the connections between the characters were a tad far-fetched. Although, this wasn't my favorite EG book, I do like her books! Thank you NetGalley and Random House Publishing - Ballantine for a digital arc of this title!

There is so much about this book that I wanted to love but in the end I only liked it. The premise was shaky to begin with but I bought in however - I couldn't buy into the characters the way that I normally do with an Emily Giffin book.

Totally think that there was too much going on and that the people in the book were not likable, I gave it three stars because there were some parts that I loved and that gave me hope for the rest of the book - alas - not to be.

I looked forward to reading this book, but unfortunately it did not live up to my expectations. I have read most of Emily Giffin’s work and have enjoyed it but this book was clearly following a formula and was very predictable. There were no surprises, no suspense, really no thought required. I might borrow a copy but would not spend money on it.

I was very much looking forward to reading another of Emily Griffin’s books because she’s on of my favorite authors. But when it got to the 9/11 part I started to worry.

Cecily is a journalist working for a newspaper receiving assignments with no real teeth. She’s just broken up with her boyfriend and she’s examining her life in a dive bar where she meets Grant. She starts a relationship with him that was just weird. 9/11 happens and she sees his face in a poster and eventually calls the number and learns he’s presumed dead.

Although she feels no sense of closure, she goes back to her former boyfriend and starts planning to marry him. But she can’t keep what she knows inside and eventually comes clean to her fiancé. This spoils their relationship again.

I like the way the book ended which made me happy.

Cecily walks into a bar and the first song she hears is Thank you by Dido. This is the perfect song, because I want to personally thank Emily Giffin for this gift of this book. Heartfelt, emotional, gut wrenching and beautiful, this book just blew me away.
Emily Giffin, is like comfort food on the pages of a book. Everything I read by her, especially this, I just fly through desperate to know what is going on with each of the characters. Giffin also perfectly sets the scene of 2001 with just a few sentences. She drops some pop culture with the mention of Will and Grace, Friends, Survivor, Sopranos, Juicy Couture and Steve Madden platform slides! She brilliantly set the scene so quickly for what life was like at that time, for Cecily, who is a 28-year-old New York transplant from Wisconsin. She came with bright eyes and big dreams for her journalism career, but between her job at third rate newspaper and her love life, she is beginning to feel disillusioned. Cecily, fresh off a breakup from her ex-boyfriend Matthew takes a lonely walk in the middle of New York City at 2:00am and finds herself in a dark bar. In a desperate moment she asks the bartender to borrow the phone to call her ex, but then she hears a voice that tells her not to. Just by listening to that voice her world is turned on its axis. She, unexpectedly falls hard and fast for the elusive Grant, who disappears after 9/11. She is desperate to find him, but it seems someone else is desperate to find him as well. This story asks us do you follow your heart and your gut, or do you follow the expected path?
With 9/11 playing such a pivotal role in this story Giffin writes with such clarity of what the country was like the day of 9/11 and post 9/11.The city and the country were forever changed. There was never a greater feeling of patriotic loyalty and you can feel that in this book. The world changed that day and there was bravery throughout the entire country, but Cecily must look inside and decide if she is going to be brave within her own life. Sometimes you must decide if you are brave enough to listen to your heart and have your path veer off the expected course into unchartered territory. This story is about forgiveness, responsibility, heartache, but also passion, community, and love. Emily Giffin just gets it right with this book and sometimes the greatest gift in life is listening to your heart over your head.

Thank you #NetGalley and #Randomhouse#ballantine for a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I read this book in one morning. It’s quite a short read, and typically Emily Giffin. The reviews, however, are all over the place, some for her posts on her Instagram page which I knew nothing about until I started to look at the reviews after I’d finished the book, and some very critical of her using 9/11 as part of the storyline. So I’m going to keep my review to the story.

I enjoyed the book and the characters. I felt they were believable, except for Amy. She was too cold and unfeeling fir me, and her reaction at the end was a bit sociopathic to me. But I like Cecily, the heroine. Cecily is from Wisconsin and is a reporter for a third rate newspaper in 2001. She’s just broken up with her boyfriend of 3 years, a born and bred New Yorker who summers in the Hamptons and wears Hermès ties. She meets a guy in a bar and it’s instant chemistry. Not going to spoil anything, then 9/11 happens.

I think Cecily’s internal struggles with everything, with the lies, the unknown, the latching on to what in her mind is probably the best option, is very honest and realistic. I’m sure most of us have had these internal struggles whether with a love interest, a friendship, or even a job. These are natural feelings, and Cecily struggled with them throughout the book.

There are lots of twists, then ending was not what I expected. It would be a great beach or pool read.