daceydacey 's review for:

Friends and Strangers by J. Courtney Sullivan

2.0

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Well written but... maybe a little boring? I loved Sullivan's novel Maine and really liked Saints for All Occasions, so I was a little surprised that I didn't really enjoy this book as well. I didn't get as immersed in it as I expected to get and I didn't connect as much with the characters. I wonder if it's because I don't plan to have children - and the book centers around the relationship between a babysitter and a mother? I loved that the babysitter Sam was going to a school based on Smith, because I went to UMass and reading about Amherst always brings on good-nostalgia (but again it was hard not to be a little critical of some of the things that were "wrong" - prob not actually wrong since it's a fictional place, but just felt off to me). And reading about Sam's experience at Smith was fun - I've been to parties there, but never imagined they had dining halls in their dorms, details like that were fascinating. I mostly felt sorry for the young mother, Elizabeth. Especially at the end when you find out what's happened in her life (it doesn't make sense to me at all).