Tessa and Nick have the perfect life. Or so everyone around them thinks. Nick is a pediatric plastic surgeon and Tessa has recently become a stay at home mom. They live in nice house in the Boston suburbs and have two beautiful young children. Until the night of their anniversary, when Nick’s pager goes off and brings their night to an abrupt close. A six year old boy has suffered burns during an accident at a party and Nick is immediately taken with his young patient…and his (single) mother, Valerie. Before long, Nick finds himself fighting his attraction to Valerie and his frustrations with Tessa.  But where will the chips fall? Will Nick turn to his wife and work things out, or give in to attraction and risk the life he and Tessa have built together?

Like Emily Giffin’s previous two novels, Baby Proof and Love the One You’re With, Heart of the Matter focuses on the questions of “what does it mean to be married?” and “what happens when spouses start wanting different things?” This time, however, those questions are applied to a couple several years into their marriage, after a move to the suburbs and the addition of children.

Through the novel, Giffin alternates point of view between Tessa and Valerie, to good effect. I appreciated seeing both Tessa and Valerie’s side of the story. So often love triangles leave one woman looking saintly and the other looking like the devil; Giffin manages to make each woman seem all too human and consequently subject to normal human flaws. I especially love the parts where the chapters overlap a bit, so we are treated to a scene from both points of view, again giving a very real quality to the novel.

The one point of view I wish we could see - and Giffin never seems to offer - is the man’s. Nick, unfortunately, comes off as a bit two dimensional and I found myself wishing for more of his take on the situation. What drove his actions? What made him think this or that was acceptable?  What triggered his actions and reactions? It’s hard to know.

Giffin’s secondary characters are a bit thin as well, acting more as props than actual participants in the story. At times they seem like mere caricatures, but in so short a novel, it’s not so terrible; at the very least they create the contrast necessary to highlight the main characters’ feelings, giving the book the measure of depth it needs.

However, I found myself able to forgive the few flaws of the novel in light of its “can’t-put-it-down” quality. I sped through about 70% of the book on a train and actually found myself talking out loud to the characters. Good thing it was a train to New York and muttering to oneself is never considered odd in that crowd! But truly, one thing that I love about Emily Giffin’s work is her refusal to sugarcoat the story. She ‘goes there’, asking the tough questions, making her readers face the agonizing choices, and never leaving them with the false promise that her characters lived “happily ever after”. Heart of the Matter is no exception and probably my favorite of her novels yet.