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swreid1981 's review for:
The Friends We Keep
by Jane Green
Many years ago, when I was first married, I read my first Jane Green novel, Jemima J and fell in love with her writing. Since that time, I’ve read a handful of Jane Green’s novels, but I’ve drifted away from her women’s fiction, and fell into a bit of a romance vortex, reading many contemporary romances with strong alpha males, and beautiful, intriguing heroines. I’d forgotten the joy that can come from reading a good contemporary fiction book, and I’m so glad I was reminded of it as I fell into the pages of The Friends We Keep.
The Friends We Keep centers around three friends from university: Maggie, Evvie, and Topher. Unlike the romance books I’ve been reading lately, friendship is at the center of this story, and it is all the better for it. Evvie and Maggie meet those first few days of university, when everyone is scared, nervous, and trying to find themselves. They quickly find Topher, the missing point to their trio of friendship, and in this odd little group of personalities, they find their home. Unable to survive university without each other, they find themselves living together, and creating a cozy, little life together. But all good things must come to an end, and they soon find themselves going their separate ways, and creating their own lives, all while slowly drifting apart. It isn’t until their fifties, that these three friends find themselves at a a crossroads, where the only people they can turn to are each other.
Told over a number of years, The Friends We Keep moves between the three narrators, telling us bits and pieces of their lives both together and apart. While the book does center around their friendship, it is not without the romantic element, or the drama that often comes with relationships. There are secrets and lies amongst the three that could topple their friendship, or in the end, bring them closer together. I loved the layout of this story, and despite the fact that it wasn’t action packed, or overly plot driven, and still moved at a good pace, and never found myself bored with the story or the happenings going on around the three friends. Everything that happened had a purpose, and while I had some things figured out much before they happened, I still enjoyed the book tremendously.
The biggest lesson that we learn from The Friends We Keep, and Jane Green’s exquisite writing is that ultimately, good friends are the backbones of our lives. And without these friends, we will often times feel lost and alone in this sea of life. It teaches us how secrets and deception can quickly ruin a friendship, and how we can overcome these derisions in our lives. This book was written to not only give us the warm feels of friendship, but to also cause us to think about our own friends, and the roles that they play in our lives.
Overall, I was thoroughly entertained by The Friends We Keep, and I’d recommend it to any love of Green’s writing, or woman’s fiction in general!
The Friends We Keep centers around three friends from university: Maggie, Evvie, and Topher. Unlike the romance books I’ve been reading lately, friendship is at the center of this story, and it is all the better for it. Evvie and Maggie meet those first few days of university, when everyone is scared, nervous, and trying to find themselves. They quickly find Topher, the missing point to their trio of friendship, and in this odd little group of personalities, they find their home. Unable to survive university without each other, they find themselves living together, and creating a cozy, little life together. But all good things must come to an end, and they soon find themselves going their separate ways, and creating their own lives, all while slowly drifting apart. It isn’t until their fifties, that these three friends find themselves at a a crossroads, where the only people they can turn to are each other.
Told over a number of years, The Friends We Keep moves between the three narrators, telling us bits and pieces of their lives both together and apart. While the book does center around their friendship, it is not without the romantic element, or the drama that often comes with relationships. There are secrets and lies amongst the three that could topple their friendship, or in the end, bring them closer together. I loved the layout of this story, and despite the fact that it wasn’t action packed, or overly plot driven, and still moved at a good pace, and never found myself bored with the story or the happenings going on around the three friends. Everything that happened had a purpose, and while I had some things figured out much before they happened, I still enjoyed the book tremendously.
The biggest lesson that we learn from The Friends We Keep, and Jane Green’s exquisite writing is that ultimately, good friends are the backbones of our lives. And without these friends, we will often times feel lost and alone in this sea of life. It teaches us how secrets and deception can quickly ruin a friendship, and how we can overcome these derisions in our lives. This book was written to not only give us the warm feels of friendship, but to also cause us to think about our own friends, and the roles that they play in our lives.
Overall, I was thoroughly entertained by The Friends We Keep, and I’d recommend it to any love of Green’s writing, or woman’s fiction in general!