What a GREAT book!!Emily Haxby seems to have it all. She is an attorney with a high powered Manhattan firm. She has her very own McDreamy.
When she feels Andrew is on the verge of proposing, she panics & breaks up with him.
It doesn't take Emily long to realize that she has made a horrible mistake. Julie Buxbaum has done such an amazing job describing Emily's pain. It is palpable. Heart breaking, tangible pain on paper. There is no way she could not have gone through it herself. Emily tries to correct her mistake. Only to discover that Andrew is done. He wants nothing more to do with her.
As Emily's story progresses, she flashes back through her relationship with Andrew. The good times and the bad times. She flashes back to when she first realizes that she DOES love Andrew (one full year after he "said" it, by the way)
"Hypnotized. I wanted to buy his soundtrack. This must be what love is, I thought. Not wanting his noises to ever stop."
As a reader you go along with Emily on her journey of heartbreak. Throw into the mix her high powered, high stress job, and the failing health of her beloved grandfather. You see Emily barely holding on by a thread. It is that hard.
In working through her new and old pain, she defines the opposite of love.
" The opposite of love isn't hate, it isn't even indifference. It's fucking disembowlment. Taking a huge shovel and digging out your own heart, and your intestines, and leaving behind nothing. Nothing of yourself to give, nothing, even to take away."
This is one of those books that stays with you long after you read it. I was pleasantly suprised to see that Julie Buxbaum was featured on the Discover New Writer's Bay at Barnes & Noble. The Opposite of Love is a book that may not change your life, but if you have experienced heartache, you can certainly identify with.
I look forward to reading more from her. Julie Buxbaum is an author I am glad I discovered.
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