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deniser821's review
4.0
B.F.F. A Memoir of Friendship Lost And Found by Christie Tate
4/5
As I've gotten older, I've realized that platonic relationships are just as important as romantic relationships and, as much as society focuses on the romantic, it's often the platonic friendships that sustain and fulfill you.
Christie Tate, author of Group, delves into the history of her female friendships beginning from her childhood. I give her props for being vulnerable and brutally honest about her own flaws as she struggles with envy and jealousy in her friendships. She's truthful about the ways she has let her friends down and how she mourns her past friendships.
If you've read her book, Group, then you know that she is in therapy and much of this book is also focused on her therapy and working on the issues that has caused problems in her friendships. I found the sections on therapy interesting and I admire anyone that is willing to constantly work on bettering themselves and owning up to their flaws and the pain they've caused others.
4/5
As I've gotten older, I've realized that platonic relationships are just as important as romantic relationships and, as much as society focuses on the romantic, it's often the platonic friendships that sustain and fulfill you.
Christie Tate, author of Group, delves into the history of her female friendships beginning from her childhood. I give her props for being vulnerable and brutally honest about her own flaws as she struggles with envy and jealousy in her friendships. She's truthful about the ways she has let her friends down and how she mourns her past friendships.
If you've read her book, Group, then you know that she is in therapy and much of this book is also focused on her therapy and working on the issues that has caused problems in her friendships. I found the sections on therapy interesting and I admire anyone that is willing to constantly work on bettering themselves and owning up to their flaws and the pain they've caused others.
pammoore's review
5.0
Excellent! If you liked Group, you'll love BFF. Somehow, Tate manages to mine her life for a totally new theme. The humor, self-awareness, and honesty were stunning.
mackenzieadriance's review
4.0
Audiobook - listened in one “sitting” (day.) 3.5 stars rounded up because certain stories within this memoir (based around friendships, regrets, anxieties, mistakes, forgiveness) resonated with me so deeply. I recognize that this story may not resonate as heavily with others, but it did with me.
torinyg's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
funny
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
3.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Eating disorder, Grief, Toxic friendship, Terminal illness, Toxic relationship, Self harm, Body shaming, and Death
Moderate: Alcoholism and Bullying
bookswithbrielle's review
4.0
Thank you @netgalley for gifting me this review in exchange for an honest review.
I picked this book up because I thoroughly enjoyed her memoir GROUP. I wasn't sure what to expect because a memoir about friendship maybe means we are going to talk sunshine and butterflies. But we didn't. We discussed uncomfortable and realistic issues surrounding friendships, especially among women. There are parts of this book that I don't feel like I relate with Christie, but that doesn't mean I didn't find similarities.
This book really makes you take a step back to examine your friendships. We spend so much time talking and or going to therapy over our romantic relationships we forget how complex and how much work our platonic friendships require. And sometimes, just like romantic relationships, there's a time to just let go.
I picked this book up because I thoroughly enjoyed her memoir GROUP. I wasn't sure what to expect because a memoir about friendship maybe means we are going to talk sunshine and butterflies. But we didn't. We discussed uncomfortable and realistic issues surrounding friendships, especially among women. There are parts of this book that I don't feel like I relate with Christie, but that doesn't mean I didn't find similarities.
This book really makes you take a step back to examine your friendships. We spend so much time talking and or going to therapy over our romantic relationships we forget how complex and how much work our platonic friendships require. And sometimes, just like romantic relationships, there's a time to just let go.
nixieknox's review
3.0
I didn't read Group, but I wanted to read this because of the recovery aspect. I liked this a lot but also am kind of glad that my friends don't require that much work/personal growth/emotional output. It seemed like a lot, but I guess recovery groups bring that out in a person. Like when her friend moved away and they all put thoughts in the wooden box for her to read, that's a hard pass for me. BUT I did love the evolution of the author's friendship with Meredith, and the Zoom calls with her high school friends were truly a joy.
barlinsbooks's review
5.0
Who is Christie Tate? That was the question I was asking myself back in 2020 when her memoir Group started popping up on a number of "best of" lists. As I wrote at the time, Christie Tate is not someone anyone had heard of -- why should we want to read about her life? Upon finishing Group, it was obvious why it was published: it’s a tremendous memoir.
So how does someone who went from obscurity to bestselling author of a memoir follow that up? She can't go back and relive things she already covered...or can she? Where Group dealt primarily with Tate's struggles with romantic relationships (and eating, and a half dozen other disorders), B.F.F. focuses on Christie's friendships, specifically her friendships with women, and all of the ways that her struggles impacted and sabotaged those over the course of her life. The titular B.F.F. is a woman named Meredith, who we learn in the opening lines of the book has passed away. And while the growth and evolution of Christie's friendship with Meredith is the constant thread to which we return in the book, this is another in-depth and candid account of Christie's struggles.
Part of what made Group so captivating for me was the novelty of the pure and unbridled honesty of the writing. As I said at the time, "it’s one that probably wouldn’t work as fiction because enough of the things that happen are too absurd to believe." Tate is fearless when it comes to chronicling events, particularly those where she is cast in an unflattering light. There are plenty in B.F.F., whether it's her grade school obsession with being best friends with the most popular girl, her high school obsession with a boyfriend, or her jealousy of other women in adulthood. While B.F.F. lacks the novelty of Group, the things that made Group such a memorable and enjoyable memoir for me also play out here.
One interesting evolution from Group is that I think that B.F.F. contains a good amount of useful self-help information, whereas Group was more simply a chronicle of Christie's journey to a stable life via an unconventional form of therapy. Female friendship and male friendship is distinctly different, and as a man it was kind of intriguing to peek behind the curtain of how women interact with each other and develop their friendships. It made it a little harder for me to relate, but there are valuable nuggets for any reader, and I suspect most women have shared several similar experiences to those Tate describes. There's an underlying layer of subtle advice to this book that I think will ring true with many female readers.
While reading Group was like watching a trainwreck, there is a greater level of relatability in B.F.F. I didn't enjoy it on quite the same level, but it's close. In the acknowledgements Tate says "Thank you to my parents for calmly accepting my memoir career -- I promise I'll give fiction a go next." I do think yet another memoir would be going to the well once too often, because there are small portions of this that feel like a retread of what worked previously, but I'm a big fan of how Tate writes and I'll be just as interested to read her fiction if she does in fact go in that direction.
If you haven't read Group, read that one first, but then make space for this on your shelf.
So how does someone who went from obscurity to bestselling author of a memoir follow that up? She can't go back and relive things she already covered...or can she? Where Group dealt primarily with Tate's struggles with romantic relationships (and eating, and a half dozen other disorders), B.F.F. focuses on Christie's friendships, specifically her friendships with women, and all of the ways that her struggles impacted and sabotaged those over the course of her life. The titular B.F.F. is a woman named Meredith, who we learn in the opening lines of the book has passed away. And while the growth and evolution of Christie's friendship with Meredith is the constant thread to which we return in the book, this is another in-depth and candid account of Christie's struggles.
Part of what made Group so captivating for me was the novelty of the pure and unbridled honesty of the writing. As I said at the time, "it’s one that probably wouldn’t work as fiction because enough of the things that happen are too absurd to believe." Tate is fearless when it comes to chronicling events, particularly those where she is cast in an unflattering light. There are plenty in B.F.F., whether it's her grade school obsession with being best friends with the most popular girl, her high school obsession with a boyfriend, or her jealousy of other women in adulthood. While B.F.F. lacks the novelty of Group, the things that made Group such a memorable and enjoyable memoir for me also play out here.
One interesting evolution from Group is that I think that B.F.F. contains a good amount of useful self-help information, whereas Group was more simply a chronicle of Christie's journey to a stable life via an unconventional form of therapy. Female friendship and male friendship is distinctly different, and as a man it was kind of intriguing to peek behind the curtain of how women interact with each other and develop their friendships. It made it a little harder for me to relate, but there are valuable nuggets for any reader, and I suspect most women have shared several similar experiences to those Tate describes. There's an underlying layer of subtle advice to this book that I think will ring true with many female readers.
While reading Group was like watching a trainwreck, there is a greater level of relatability in B.F.F. I didn't enjoy it on quite the same level, but it's close. In the acknowledgements Tate says "Thank you to my parents for calmly accepting my memoir career -- I promise I'll give fiction a go next." I do think yet another memoir would be going to the well once too often, because there are small portions of this that feel like a retread of what worked previously, but I'm a big fan of how Tate writes and I'll be just as interested to read her fiction if she does in fact go in that direction.
If you haven't read Group, read that one first, but then make space for this on your shelf.