mmalates28 's review for:

Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close by Aminatou Sow, Ann Friedman

4.0

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I first heard about this book from Dope Lab's podcast episode "What about your friends?" While listening to the episode, I felt validated by Sow and Friedman's emphasis on platonic friendships as just as valid & necessary as romantic ones. Another validating point -- Dr. Marisa Franco, a friendship expert interviewed on the podcast, also talked about the hole that you can feel when a friendship ends without clear reason, despite the fact that it's socially acceptable for friends to just drift away (vs. a romantic relationship, where there's more of a clear reasoning for a break-up). All of this made me super excited to read this book!

I thought that the book elaborated on many of the points touched on in the podcast, with specific attention paid to Sow and Friedman's real life friendship highs and lows. I've read a few reviews here that say the book was boring and full of random details, but I felt like the details painted a clear picture of Sow and Friedman's friendship in a way that I enjoyed & valued. I also like to watch day-in-the-life YouTube vlogs, so maybe these two things fall into similar interest categories? The one distracting aspect of the book was the narrative style. It took some time for me to get accustomed to the "we", "Aminatou", and "Ann" narrators switching back and forth, especially because I don't often read books written in the second person.

All in all, I very much enjoyed and, in fact, flew through this read. I'm looking forward to reading more about friendships (starting first with Dr. Marisa Franco) in the future!

Also ~shout out to Aunt Kathy for sending this to me for my birthday :-)