probablyjenna 's review for:

With Friends Like These: A Novel by Alissa Lee

2.0

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With Friends Like These is taking itself way too seriously for the story it is telling.

Six Harvard roommates-turned-besties create a game that begins on New Year’s Day and lasts the first week of the new year. The game involves prop guns is essentially just assassin — they run around and try to secretly “kill” each other, and the last one standing wins. For some unexplained reason, they call this “The Circus” and act like it’s the wildest and most crazy thing anyone has ever done. Like, the way they talk about this game had me certain I was missing something. Their senior year there’s an accident, and one of the roommates dies — and the book tiptoes around how this happened until nearly the end, and the payoff was not great.

So I guess the real plot is that 25 years later, they still play but a few of them want to stop until they find out that conveniently some money they put in years ago as the pot for the winner has been invested and is now like a million dollars. And these best friends, instead of splitting the money between them, decide to do one more round of The Circus and have the winner take all. And again — they, and everyone around them, acts like The Circus is this wild, dangerous thing. I don’t get it!

All of the characters are so unpleasant, the mystery is so uninteresting, and the ending of the book made me roll my eyes. 

I think if you’re looking for something that is light and sort of silly, this could work. For me, I was left feeling a bit disappointed that there wasn’t more to the story.