The Lies that Bind, by Emily Giffin

This one was kind of a so-so book for me. It’s set in New York City in the summer of 2001, when Cecily, an aspiring journalist in her late 20s, is still reeling from a breakup with Matt. Then she meets Grant in a bar and begins a whirlwind romance that doesn’t seem quite real. Is it real? Is anything about the enigmatic but nearly perfect Grant real, or is he hiding something? And then, as inevitable as the book about the eruption of Pompeii that I just read, 9/11 hits, and everything changes in unexpected ways.

I didn’t connect a whole lot with Cecily as a main character — her personality seemed a little ill-defined — and I didn’t really get invested in either Matt or Grant as romantic leads, though for much of the book Cecily is genuinely torn between them. The book is titled The Lies that Bind, so you clearly know it’s going to be a book where a lot of the plot is going to hinge on people lying to each other, but even so it’s annoying to read about plot complications that could so simply be avoided with a little basic honesty. Overall, this romance didn’t grab me as much as I’d hoped it would.