The Friends We Keep by Jane Green
Publisher: Berkley Books
Format: eARC
Source: Netgalley
Genres: Women's Fiction
Pages: 384
Add It:Goodreads
Reading Challenges: Goodreads Books Read 2019
Purchase: Amazon|Audible
Publication Date: June 4, 2019

The Friends We Keep is the heartwarming and unforgettable new novel from Jane Green, New York Times bestselling author of The Sunshine Sisters 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.

We meet Ben in the first chapter of this book, he is battling his demons when he receives a life changing text.
In the following chapters we go back in time to when Evvie, Maggie, and Topher became fast friends in college, forming a pact and a bond that they swore was never going to break.
Of course life happens, friends keep secrets form each other and Evvie, Maggie, and Topher do drift apart but manage to keep in touch over the years now and again.
These 3 characters were easy for me to relate to and I quickly immersed myself in their worlds. To me Evvie was the character that I bonded with the most. Evvie was a successful model until an unhappy marriage and weight gain
threw her modeling career off track. Having always struggling with that image of a perfect body/weight myself I could relate to Evvie’s feelings about her body and self worth that was tied into how thin she was and how that impacted her self esteem.

When the all decide to meet again at a college reunion they bond like never before.

This is when things get interesting and a shocking secret is revealed. Each of these characters have their own secrets and demons that they have had to battle with through the years. Jane Green does an awesome job of telling their stories separately then seamlessly weaving it all together.

This book is the perfect summer read.

Reading this book contributed to these challenges:

• Goodreads Books Read 2019