The Opposite of Love »

Julie Buxbaum is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard Law School. The Opposite of Love is her first novel.

When successful twenty-nine-year-old Manhattan attorney Emily Haxby ends her happy relationship just as her boyfriend is on the verge of proposing, she can t explain to even her closest friends why she did it. Somewhere beneath her sense of fun, her bravado, and her independent exterior, Emily knows that her breakup with Andrew has less to do with him and more to do with...her.

As the holiday season looms and Emily contemplates whether she made a huge mistake, the rest of her world begins to unravel: she is assigned to a multimillion-dollar lawsuit where she must defend the very values she detests by a boss who can t keep his hands to himself; her Grandpa Jack, a charming, feisty octogenarian and the person she cares most about in the world, is losing it, while her emotionally distant father has left her to cope with this alone; and underneath it all, fading memories of her deceased mother continue to remind her that love doesn t last forever.

How this brave, original young...

The Washington Post - Sarah L. Courteau

The real pleasure of this book isn't to be found in moments of high comedy but in the voice of the slightly self-deprecating, slightly sardonic narrator, wise to the world but not yet to herself. What's important is that she's willing to pick her way toward clarity, one difficult step at a time. That a tale about a modern young woman who squarely confronts her garden-variety challenges can feel this fresh is striking.