Best Friends

Product Information

The Best of Friends wasted no time in grabbing my attention. The action starts in the very first sentence and doesn’t let up from there. I was captivated, wanting to know what happened, to whom, and why.

MY THOUGHTS: I failed to become invested in The Best of Friends by Lucinda Berry. I have read this author previously, and really enjoyed her work, but this just left me cold. For a short novel, this felt inordinately long! This is the story of two life-long friends. In the opening of the book (Karachi, 1988 - a significant year), we meet Zahra and Maryam as teenage girls and already “best of friends”. I nearly stopped reading the book after this opening section because it all feels a bit teenage/YA as girls start to experience their adult bodies (and the effect those bodies can have on men) and as they share their dreams and ambitions for their future and fight with their parents over what they can and cannot do. Then there’s some unpleasantness before we skip forward to 2019 and see the two women now in the UK holding jobs convenient for creating tension in the developing story line. This book is about the wrong thing. It's a bummer. The beginning is alive and interesting, deep in the friendship of two girls who have very different families and lives and personalities. It's clear, though, that the book is using this as set dressing. That ultimately it is going to take us to something bigger. Unfortunately, it's this first section that is the book at its best, in 1988 Karachi, getting into the day to day of their lives and the strangeness of being a teenager just starting to understand the world just as the whole world is changing.

Secrets are discovered and uncomfortable truths about their own lives laid bare as the thin line between their friendship and needing answers starts to waver What a ride this was. Neither character is particularly likable or relatable in my opinion. It was a little difficult to follow along at times, but most chapters were pretty short, and it was only took about 2 1/2 hours of my time, so that kept me going. I'm seeing others say there are no quotation marks and it reads like a play in the print form, so I guess that's why it's confusing in the audio version.

This is fast pacing, intriguing, well-developed, thought provoking, argumentative story is told by three women. They are both flawed and broken characters but it is easy to resonate with each of them separately. The story hooks you up and captivates your attention till the end. I was dying to binge watch new season La Casa Da Papel (Money Height)s new season but this book occupied me so I couldn’t put it down. My fingers were already glued and my mind was already addicted! Kate and Bella meet when they’re 6 years old and become best friends. It’s a bit of a toxic relationship through the teen years but many are at that age. Many of us can remember and cringe. Things are very competitive and you’re very awkward, coming into your own, but will privileged Kate ever change? She seems to be the root of the problem. Overall, this felt sadly shallow and too soap opera-ish for my tastes which is a shame as Shamsie can write with assurance and insight about the workings of power, culture, women and politics and I'd hoped for more of that here.I was gripped by this story of Kendra, Dani and Lindsey, who have been best friends forever! Now they have children of their own, and each of their teens are best friends to each other. One night, a horrific event takes place while the teens are hanging out. One ends up dead from a shotgun wound, another is in coma due to a shot to the head, and the other is alive but seemingly unable to talk and explain what happened. This creates a domino effect in the lives of the three women and their families. best friends are plunged into a nightmare scenario after their teenaged sons' sleepover goes wrong, So y'all know the drill about a thriller book but since I really hated this book I'll just go ahead and describe how the book was with gifs. Maryam is a startup investor, part of a shadowy cabal of capitalists who trade favours with the same government that Zahra and her organisation is determined to hold to account. Shamsie makes much of the fact that Zahra gets profiled by the Guardian, while Maryam’s press interviews are too low-key to show up on a Google search. Maryam is happily married and a parent to a three-year old; Zahra is happily divorced and the “fourth member” in her bestie’s home setup. For much of the novel, the relative absence of strife only underlines the fact that theirs is more a companionship of equals. Many friends to lovers books can also fall into the category of second chance romances where friends may cross the line into lovers’ territory but then something happens that drives them apart until they reunite a certain time later.