Basically a retelling of the Kennedy story, Meant to Be just did not capture my attention. It is told in two perspectives, both Cate and Joe, with each person's viewpoint given. This means that the story is very repetitive at times, going over the same situations and circumstances. It took me a long time to finish and is not a book that I would recommend to other readers.

Disclaimer: I was given an Advanced Reader's Copy of Meant to Be by NetGalley and the publisher. The decision to read and review this book was entirely my own.

Thank you Netgalley, the publisher, and the author for the opportunity to read this ARC for an honest review. I love Emily Giffin, and this one was no exception. Loved the Kennedy vibes!

Joe and Cate meet one day. There is a small similarity in how they grew up. But mostly, they have lived two different lifestyles. At two vastly different spectrums. Although they find themselves attracted to each other, are they meant to be together. I enjoyed the characters and their stories.

Sometimes I pick up books read the synopsis but then don't actually read the book until weeks later, so I go into it completely blind. This was the case when I started reading this book.
Star crossed lovers are probably my favorite thing to read.. well one of them so this book was right up my alley. I actually was not aware that this was based of JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette but when they started talking about a famous political family, its hard not to think of the Kennedys.

I liked that we get both sides of the story, Joe's and Cate, but instead of seeing the continuation of an event we actually get to see both sides of the situation. Like the first time they meet, I though this was well done because even though yes I'm kind of reading the same thing all over, both characters had their own individual voice that made it different. I actually also got the chance to listen to the audio and I think I enjoyed that a bit more. The characters weren't remarkable, there were times when they were a bit predictable but they were also real and it was hard not to feel for them and to feel like they were real people which now i know they kind of were. Cate coming from a bad home situation and Joe struggling with family expectations. I love character driven stories and this one was exactly that.
I didn't figure out that they were based of real people until I was more than half way done with the book so once I knew that I understood why the author created the character how she did. it feels like we know them and understand their problems because of how public they were but at the same time we don't know them or could understand what they felt at the time, and that is what made me enjoy the book more. I did google JFK Jr and Carolyn, I figured that I would understand the story more. I saw people say it was loosely based off them and yes I can agree although at times it felt very very very similar to actual events.
I think that the story impacted me more because I knew that some of the events actually happened and knowing that JKF Jr. and Carolyn Bassette did not get the happy ending they should have gotten. But it was nice to see that Joe and Cate were able to survive the accident and we get that what if they had survived, that made me cry. 
I liked that we get to see both characters grow from teenagers to adults, we see how they change an mature and how their life growing up affects the relationships that they have as adults.

I really enjoyed this book, from start to finish and could not put it down. It was also my first book by this author but probably wont be the last one that I pick up

thank you Netgalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine, Ballantine Books for the ARC

What another great book from Emily Giffin! I’ve read previous books from this author and really enjoyed them. I was pleasantly surprised to see that this was just as good as those. I enjoyed the story and the characters were very well written.

A wonderful re-imagining of JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessett.

I loved this story but have to admit, I was fascinated by JFK Jr. back in the 90's. Emily Giffin is a favorite author of mine and this book did not disappoint.

This book was. quick read for me - I loved the way the story paralleled the story of the life of JFK Jr and Carolyn Bessette while being different enough so that you didn't know exactly what would happen as the book progressed. Definitely recommend!

I love all the books, Emily Giffin writes & this is no exception. This book is loosely based on John f. Kennedy, Jr and was sensitive to the situation. Thank you for my advanced copy of the story.

I received a free copy from NetGalley. Fiction, but they took a lot of plot and story line from the Kennedy family, which just made it kind of weird and copycat feeling while not being enough of a history. Not a favorite for me.

Date made up. I feel behind on reviews.

I loved this book so much! Her writing is always spot on and this was no different! Such a great story and strong characters

A wooden story with no substance. Felt like a cash grab without much thought put into it. Will not read this author again.

I love Emily Giffin, but I wasn't sure about this one. I follow her on IG and know how much she loves the royal family and the Kennedys though, so I figured she couldn't definitely do this kind of story justice - and she did! It was sweet and charming!

If you love reading about the US Kennedy family, you will probably love this book. In the book the author fashions a young man who, like the Kennedy males, is an icon in US culture, with everything and anything a person might want at his fingertips. However, with all this comes the responsibility of the position, always cognizant of the public watching your every move and thought. The woman in the story is a young girl from a working class family, who escapes her dowdy existence and abusive step-father, to become a model. After a few years of that, she on to working for a well-known fashion designer. About this time is when she meets up with Joe Kingsley, the cultural icon every woman fantasizes about. Both begin a long, and not-quite-so public relationship (because he is so well known and thus the focus of the press who relentless dig out any news or stories about him). This was an interesting though not so fascinating read. If anyone is familiar with the Kennedy’s and their very public lives, the story will be very familiar. The author definitely knows and loves the Kennedy stories, as seen in the book. However, she has not really created characters with very much depth. In fact, there is not as much believability about it all. For starters, Cate, once a well-known model, hates going public with her relationship with Joe, because, as she indicates, she hates the publicity. I found it difficult to believe a model would dislike publicity, as that is what drives their careers. Also, Joe is not against publicity of their relationship, when, as far as I know, people in similar positions as the ones who shy away from any media mention of their lives. There was definitely a lot of good chemistry between the pair, but I am not sure it made up for all the angst. The book moved along as fast as it could, but I was ready and waiting for the ending long before it came. I just knew the story so well. This is the first book I have read by the author. I suspect and hope that others are better, based on the reviews I have read. I will try another. I received this from NetGalley to read and review.

I think this was too close to JFK Jr.'s life that it felt like it should have been historical fiction, yet read like a romance. I don't know, this just wasn't for me.

I received an advance copy. All thoughts are my own.

I love this author but this novel fell a little flat to me. I loved the nod to the kennedy family but besides that, the character development felt very one sided. I felt like I knew so much more about Cate than joe. I did like the way it ended but the whole story felt a bit cheesy. That being said, I finished it in one day!

THANK YOU!!
I really enjoyed Emily Giffin's latest book.
She always delivers a fantastic story.
I could not put it down.

Meant to Be by Emily Giffin harkens back to the golden age of the writer and of American history. Introducing readers to Joseph S. Kingsley III and Cate Cooper, this Cinderella-esque love story is loosely based on the Kennedys.

Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for sharing this book with me. All thoughts are my own.

Inspired by the Kennedy family, Emily Giffin centers her latest novel around the wealthy Kingsley family. After his father's untimely death, Joe Kingsley III inherits the famous legacy (think John F. Kennedy, Jr.). Cate, on the other hand, is born on the other side of the tracks. She grows up with an abusive stepfather and leaves home before she can graduate from high school. She supports herself as a famous model, and when she's on an assignment, she encounters the handsome Joe Kingsley, whose poster used to hang on her bedroom wall.

I usually enjoy Giffin's breezy novels, but this time, her characters were hard for me to connect with. Joe came across as spoiled and entitled, and the biggest hurdle in his relationship with Cate was how to deal with the paparazzi. Unlike JFK Jr., everything works out perfectly for Joe Kingsley. On the other hand, the pages practically turned themselves, so the book provided me with a few hours of escapism. Take this one to the beach: the plot developments are worthy of a soap opera. Just don't go into this book expecting realism.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC in exchange for my opinions.

This book was unbelievably good, better than I anticipated. I couldn't put it down. Such great characters, written in such a way you really understood them. Even though I just wanted to scream at Cate at times for her low self-worth (just tell him what's really going on already would you!) it was so believable and well-written and even gets to the nitty gritty of how some feel such low self-worth and sabotage things for that reason. I love how the story line flowed from Joe to Cate, telling their stories in their own viewpoints and letting us, essentially, grow up with them and see their relationship develop. This is the type of story that takes you by the heart and doesn't let go. Well written, highly recommended, the type of book that makes it hard to find something good to read afterward.

This was a bit of a miss for me. There were aspects of it that I really liked, such as that it was clearly inspired but the Kennedy family. But for some reason this story never really picked up fully for me and I was always on the outskirts of feeling fully immersed. As a whole I love Emily Henry but I just don think this was the story for me.