Name: mariola's review of Friends and Strangers by J. Courtney Sullivan
Item: Friends and Strangers
Rating: 4
Author: mariola

J. Courtney Sullivan

From the best-selling author of Maine and Saints for All Occasions (named one of the Washington Post's Ten Best Books of the Year and a New York Times Critics' Pick) comes an insightful, hilarious, and compulsively readable novel about a complicated friendship between two women who are at two very different stages in life. Elisabeth, an accomplished journalist and new mother, is struggling to adjust to life in a small town after twenty years in New York City. A job opportunity for her husband, and the chance to live closer to his financially struggling parents, convinced Elisabeth to move. But alone in the new house with their infant son all day (and awake with him much of the night), she feels uneasy, adrift. She neglects her work, losing untold hours to her Brooklyn moms' Facebook group, her "influencer" sister's Instagram feed, and text chains with the best friend she never sees anymore. Enter Sam, a senior at the local women's college, who is hired by Elisabeth to babysit. Sam is struggling to decide between the path she's always planned on and a romantic entanglement that threatens her ambition. She's worried about her student loan debt and what the future holds. In short order, Sam and Elisabeth grow close. Sam becomes Elisabeth's confidante, a repository for all the secrets Elisabeth is too ashamed to tell even her own husband. Elisabeth, in turn, offers guidance, allaying Sam's fears. But when Sam finds an unlikely kindred spirit in Elisabeth's father-in-law, the true differences between the women's lives become starkly revealed and leads to a betrayal that has devastating consequences. A masterful exploration of modern motherhood, power dynamics within friendships, and privilege in its many forms, Friends and Strangers brilliantly reveals how a single year can shape the course of a life.

Friends and Strangers

Shelby Wheeler

THE PERFECT BOOK GROUP SUMMER READ FROM BEST-SELLING AUTHOR OF THE ENGAGEMENTS AND MAINE 'I LOVED IT' Meg Wolitzer, author of The Female Persuasion 'HER BEST YET' Taylor Jenkins Reid, author of Daisy Jones & The Six 'A SMART AND DEEPLY COMPELLING EXPLORATION OF FEMALE FRIENDSHIP' Tom Perrotta, author of The Leftovers 'CAPTIVATING, WISE AND LAUGH-OUT-LOUD FUNNY' Ann Napolitano, author of Dear Edward Elisabeth, an accomplished journalist and new mother, is struggling to adjust to life in a small town after nearly twenty years in New York City. Alone in the house with her infant son all day (and awake with him much of the night), she feels uneasy, adrift. She neglects her work, losing untold hours to her Brooklyn moms' Facebook group, her "influencer" sister's Instagram feed, and text messages with the best friend she never sees anymore. Enter Sam, a senior at the local women's college, whom Elisabeth hires to babysit. Sam is struggling to decide between the path she's always planned on and a romantic entanglement that threatens her ambition. She's worried about student loan debt and what the future holds. In short, they grow close. But when Sam finds an unlikely kindred spirit in Elisabeth's father-in-law, the true differences between the women's lives become starkly revealed and a betrayal has devastating consequences. A masterful exploration of motherhood, power dynamics, and privilege in its many forms, Friends and Strangers reveals how a single year can shape the course of a life.

The New York Times bestselling novel of female friendship and privilege

Elad Schulman

mariola

Liyah 🤎

Really enjoyable prose. I loved how it switched perspectives between the two characters. I thoroughly enjoyed reading, however, it sort of didn't end up going anywhere. The end was lackluster to me and it didn't feel like there was much of a payoff. Overall, I'd recommend it as a light read but nothing to write home about.

Kendall McClain

So much potential:( I kept waiting for it to get good because it seemed so close but it never did. It was comically repetitive and very long for a book with no real plot and quite boring characters. I did like the first few chapters and the hollow tree theory but it’s a no from me.

Kristen Claiborn

I have an entire notebook of books I’d like to read. I do realize that I will likely never get to the end of my TBR pile, which is actually a good thing. It means that people keep writing books I’d like to read. It’s wonderful. I keep up with celebrity book clubs to maintain relevancy in my reviews, if I was only reading books from decades, or even a few years ago, nobody would care to read my reviews and it would be a pointless endeavor. Because I keep up with highly anticipated new releases, I rarely have time to dig into a book from my TBR list. This book was published right before I started following those celebrity book clubs, so instead of going on the must-read list, it went into the TBR notebook. I FINALLY had the time to read it (yay!) so I checked it out on Libby and dug in. 
	And promptly got bored. 
	I did finish the book, but it took me WAY longer than it would have normally, largely because I got so bored I started another book and went back-and-forth between the two. I have discovered that does help me if I find myself uninterested in a book. Now that I’m done with it, I can admit the story isn’t terrible. I DID keep reading. The characters are interesting, and they made sufficiently idiotic mistakes that I felt compelled to find out what happened to them, but it was just blandly written. I also found myself frustrated that all of the storylines didn’t seem to be “done.” I really want to know how Elisabeth’s second child came about! Did Elisabeth ever come clean to her husband??? What happened to Gaby? Did Elisabeth and her sister come to terms with each other? What happed to her parents? I wanted to know more, but I never got it. I admit I felt pretty let down when I finished reading the last page and didn’t get the answers I wanted.

Cheri McElroy

This is a slow-burn, character-driven story of the unlikely friendship between a new mom and her twenty-year-old babysitter. The story is about lies, secrets, family, and adulthood. I learned a lot about myself in its pages.

Christin Sharp

Okay, maybe it’s more like a 3.5, I liked it a lot, wanted to love it, but the ending left me wanting so much more. It feels like it just cuts off & honestly by the end I didn’t even like the characters that much. I loved them to start. I dunno, it was good, great even, but just was disappointed by the final few chapters!!!!!!!

Tabea Lüth

Plot was interesting but the characters felt quite flat and the dialogue at times very constructed 

Steffi

It was slow going in the beginning, but ended up being a quality read with characters that were fully fleshed out. A lot of it was like watching a movie, where you know something has happened, yet it hadn't been revealed to other characters yet. It felt like real life. My favorite character was George, for sure!

Lauren Attaway

Some of the early reviews I saw about this book made it sound like something I would really not enjoy, so I was pleasantly surprised at how much I did. Excellent storyline that I had to know the end of.

i was totally drawn to this one because of the cover, but the exploration of female friendships also really intrigued me. i really enjoyed the first 150 pages, but there were too many things that negatively impacted my reading experience.

things i liked:
🍷the writing is very easy and readable, and the choice of writing the book in dual pov definitely helped me feel connected to both of the main characters
🍷the discussion of privilege was very interesting, and i felt myself nodding along to a lot of the anecdotes that were brought up in the book

things i didn’t like:
🍷 when the plot is based purely on the fact that characters aren’t communicating, i could scream. as the reader, it’s so hard for me to find the motivation to keep reading because i know that things could be wrapped up in 30 pages if the characters would just talk to one another.
🍷 the characters just kept making too many questionable decisions. i’m not sure if elisabeth was written with the intention of being an “unlikeable character”, but that’s definitely how she came across 🙃
🍷 none of the characters really learned anything by the end of the book?

Anika | @chaptersofmay

Friends and Strangers follows the lives of two women: Elizabeth and Sam. Elizabeth is a new mother, who moves from the city to the suburbs with her husband. Sam is a college student trying to balance school, her relationship, and her job as Elizabeth’s babysitter. Both women are trying to find their path, despite being at different stages in their lives.

I love Sullivan's insightful and intriguing writing. This element is what makes the novel entertaining, even when the plot dipped in excitement. The book provides an in-depth inspection motherhood and class divisions through a slow-paced narrative, perfectly capturing the truths and impact of privilege in a flawed system. I also really like how it highlights just how much of a hold social media can have on us, and how it warps our perceptions of others. Friends and Strangers is much more thought-provoking than I predicted, but this is certainly a welcoming surprise.

However, biggest struggle in this novel for me is Elizabeth. She is so frustrating! In the beginning, the secrets she keeps created an air of mystery and I was eager to uncover the lies. But her selfishness and narrow-mindedness completely eclipse this. She has human qualities that give her depth as a character, but her obsessions and approach to motherhood grew bothersome. 

Overall, I enjoyed this novel, mainly due to Sullivan’s clear-eyed tone of voice. Sadly, I didn’t love the characters and would have loved to see more development in them. But I adore the way Sullivan unmasks the depths of female relationships and influenced misjudgements, and I’m excited to read more from her.

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Heather Ellis

This book ticked many of my boxes. Family conflict? Check. Complex Female Friendships? Check. Exploration of Power? Check.

Elizabeth finds herself ripped from the streets of Brooklyn to a miniature white college town. Her husband has a dream, and this has landed her in a suburban nightmare. Her newborn baby Gil his her sole companion in this sleepy college town, until she decides to hire a babysitter - Sam. Most of the novel focuses on their relationship, and Elizabeth's attempt to craft Sam's life into one she deems appropriate.

There are power dynamics between the two women throughout the book, but sometimes it felt like this wasn't pushed far enough. Both women are described as 'information seekers' (read: snoopers). However, this doesn't really happen in the book. I wanted more Hollow Tree conspiracies!

Throughout the book there are many petty relationships between Elizabeth and her family members. Sam's relationships also seemed strained at the best of times.

This is a good suburban read for people who love family drama and small town gossip.

Ana Couto

This was my first J. Courtney Sullivan read, but clearly I've been missing out -- I loved her writing! It's impactful but in an understated sort of way. I thought the juxtaposition between Elisabeth and Sam was so interesting -- an accomplished journalist and new mother vs. a college senior. One who appears to have her life all figured out, and one whose early adulthood still brims with endless possibilities. But of course, as the novel progresses we learn that these women's lives are far more complex than we initially believe, and that each possesses something the other has. It's rare that I read a book told through dual perspectives in which I like both viewpoints equally, but that was certainly the case with FRIENDS AND STRANGERS. I'll definitely be picking up SAINTS FOR ALL OCCASIONS next, and I can't wait for Sullivan's next book! 

Thank you to the publisher, NetGalley, & Libro.fm for the ARC/ALC in exchange for an honest review!

Iris

Lemarnie Tizzard

Aiko van de gaer 

Allison Garber

Darcy Lambert

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A TODAY SHOW #ReadWithJenna BOOK CLUB PICK An insightful, hilarious, and compulsively readable novel about a complicated friendship between two women who are at two very different stages in life, from the bestselling author of Maine and Saints for All Occasions. Elisabeth, an accomplished journalist and new mother, is struggling to adjust to life in a small town after nearly twenty years in New York City. Alone in the house with her infant son all day (and awake with him much of the night), she feels uneasy, adrift. She neglects her work, losing untold hours to her Brooklyn moms' Facebook group, her "influencer" sister's Instagram feed, and text messages with the best friend she never sees anymore. Enter Sam, a senior at the local women's college, whom Elisabeth hires to babysit. Sam is struggling to decide between the path she's always planned on and a romantic entanglement that threatens her ambition. She's worried about student loan debt and what the future holds. In short order, they grow close. But when Sam finds an unlikely kindred spirit in Elisabeth's father-in-law, the true differences between the women's lives become starkly revealed and a betrayal has devastating consequences. A masterful exploration of motherhood, power dynamics, and privilege in its many forms, Friends and Strangers reveals how a single year can shape the course of a life.

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Friends and Strangers by J. Courtney Sullivan

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