The Friends We Keep
As seen on The Today Show! The Friends We Keep is the heartwarming and unforgettable New York Times bestselling novel from Jane Green, author of Sister Stardust and The Beach House. Evvie, Maggie, and Topher have known one another since college. Their friendship was something they swore would last forever. Now years have passed, the friends have drifted apart, and they never found the lives they wanted--the lives they dreamed of when they were young and everything seemed possible. Evvie starved herself to become a supermodel but derailed her career by sleeping with a married man. Maggie married Ben, the boy she fell in love with in college, never imagining the heartbreak his drinking would cause. Topher became a successful actor, but the shame of a childhood secret shut him off from real intimacy. By their thirtieth reunion, these old friends have lost touch with one another and with the people they dreamed of becoming. Together again, they have a second chance at happiness...until a dark secret is revealed that changes everything. The Friends We Keep is about how despite disappointments we've had or mistakes we've made, it's never too late to find a place to call home.
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Community Reviews
This grew on me. It follows the lives of three university friends from when they meet at a UK university in the 1980s through to the current day (2019). To begin with, I found the characters rather shallow and stereotypical, and the plot only mildly amusing - a cliche storyline of girl-can’t-stand-boy-but-you-know-they'll-end-up-together. As I was listening to the audiobook, I also had to grin and bear it through the author/narrators’ slightly dodgy regional and international accents (almost every character had a different one, which was a little over-kill). I strongly disliked Evvie and many of her life choices. I would not ever want her as my best friend. The other two main characters ("mother-hen" Maggie and "gay-actor" Topher) were perfectly amiable. Having said all this, I did enjoy the trip down memory lane to my own UK university days with all their tales of life in halls as freshers and later living off campus in rented student accommodation. Furthermore, the author then surprised me halfway through the book as she really began to develop the plot and characters in a much more deep and moving way. We end up following three very strong personalities whose lives end up going in very different directions. I thought that Jane Green does a really good job with the later story progression and bringing things together in the final few chapters. The story ends up providing plenty of drama, humour, tragedy, and heart-wrenching moments. The audiobook just needed to dial back on the accents...
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