With friends like these…It’s the end of summer. Just before I start senior year with my two best friends in the whole world. Dustin and Emily are everything to me. We’ve been inseparable since middle school, and when we’re together, nothing can go wrong. But things aren’t always what they seem. Em’s turned into a drunken mess who parties too much. Dustin and I have hooked up a few times—and now … a few times—and now he’s ready to take our relationship to the next level. Yet I’m not sure I want things to change. I’m scared if I take it any further with Dustin, our friendship will be ruined forever. Then there’s Ryan. The new guy. He’s hot. He flirts way too much. And Em has totally set her sights on him.
So when my best friend betrays me in the worst possible way, guess who’s there to help me pick up the pieces of my broken heart? Ryan. But he’s so confusing. Annoying. Sweet. Sexy. I want to trust him, yet he makes it so hard. What I really want is for everything to go back to the way it was before.
Before I found out that best friends make the worst kind of enemies.
“Drama, drama, drama – you know you love it! And Monica brings it in this super sexy and refreshing, un-put-down-able YA!!” Rachel Van Dyken, #1 New York Times Bestselling Author
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Having already read the prequel book to this series, I was already intrigued as to what would happen with this group of friends and their messy relationships.
I found myself truly relating to Amanda in the series and being more interested in her part of the story. That doesn’t mean that I wasn’t drawn into the story of Dustin, Ryan, Em and Livvy though. What a dramatic mess everything for them has turned out to be. I am sincerely rooting for Em to get her life together and for Livvy to see which guy is really right for her (if any, a girl doesn’t need a boyfriend to be happy!)
I’m anxious to find out what happens next in the 2nd book!
Sweet, sexy, and full of the perfect amount of angst. Just Friends is YA-drama at it’s best.
I thought that this was just OK. It was a fast, easy read but I think you can only take so much drama before I just want to scratch my eyes. I want to read the next two books though because the next two looks follow a couple I feel I get invested in (I honestly thought we would get this couple throughout the books but it does not look like it).
This read is one that will have your head spinning and constantly asking yourself what makes a friend? The term “Just Friends” will take you to a whole new meaning which will cause you endless frustrations and constant choices and decisions to be made. Synopsis alone had me intrigued and recalling my younger days.
Dustin Henry, Olivia Hudson, and Emily a.k.a. “Em” Griffith have been best friends since their childhood days. They have been inseparable ever since and at the start of the story it was presented that their friendship can do no wrong. The novel revolves around their last summer before the their senior year and it was a summer where things are changing and perspectives are coming to light. Friendships are tested and trust becomes an eye opener on who your real friends are.
“Just friends. Cheaters love to use that term.”
Cue in Ryan Bennett. A new hottie who started hanging out and partying with Em over the summer. He is a smooth talking charmer that flirts with everyone but is someone that Dustin does not like. When Olivia and Ryan first meet it is met with questionable sparks that should not be addressed because according to standard girl code Em has first dibs on him and you do not go after someone your friends (especially best friends) has eyes on first.
A secret isn’t a secret when more than one person knows about it.
As the story progresses along we see changes in personalities physically and mentally with all the characters and will have you torn between Team Dustin, Team Ryan, Team Em, and Team Olivia. It will have you confused along with blended intense emotions where it will constantly have you thinking who, what, and why? We also have supporting characters like Amanda Winters and Jordan Tuttle that will throw you off the mix. Friendship come and go but true friends will be there for you through thick and thin unselfishly. These group of friends’ story will truly test everyone and push buttons to no end. Thank you Monica Murphy for getting me to rant, vent, and pick sides like crazy. To top it off the author leaves us with an ending that will have you itching for more in the series.
This is a sensational read.
…And very addictive but so frustrating at times to, so much so I couldn’t get enough.
Just Friends is full of teenage angst and all the ups and downs of High School life and the drama it entails. With characters you love and characters you love to hate Olivia ,Dustin,Ryan and Em are caught up in secrets,lies,jealousy and love triangles.
Monica does a captivating job at writing a rollercoaster that is teenage life and the flawed and imperfect relationships that you can have in your teens.
I really enjoyed this book and I was compulsed to read it.
It was irresisitable.
Loved it 5 Stars.
Just Friends is a fabulous YA with loads of teenage angst, love triangles and growth. I love the Dustin, Ryan, Olivia triangle. You feel for Olivia who had had a thing for her best friend Dustin for years and is torn by her instant attraction to Ryan. Then as most teenage love stories go truth comes out and trust is hard to get back. I love the chemistry between Olivia and Ryan. Ryan is more like the I’m just an innocent bad boy and Dustin is more like I’m just the innocent boy next door. Sometimes it is not who you think you’ll fall for. I love the growing friendship Olivia forms with Amanda after the betrayal of her bestie Em. I cannot wait to see what happens with Amanda and Jordan in the next book and get a little more Ryan and Livvy too.
Disclaimer: This review MAY contain spoilers.
This is a hard series for me to rate or review. One one hand, I really enjoyed reading this book and the prequel and I sped through them at record speed. On the other hand, they don’t really have many of the qualities that I admire in a good book. In fact, there are hardly any despite the fact that I enjoyed reading them so much. I think that I would lump this series in the “guilty pleasure” category.
This book is pretty much devoid of plot aside from the romantic lives of the characters. It drives the entire story. Not much else happens throughout the book. And the majority of it is just teenagers hooking up, having sex, and betraying one another in love triangles and squares. It sounds juvenile, and perhaps it is, but I will say that it was compelling and entertaining. This story is about drama to the max.
The different character types definitely made the story interesting, though I thought that some of them could have used way more character development. For instance, Emily was the most drama-filled character in the book. She was always starting drama, lying, hooking up with guys, drinking, doing drugs, partying, and just pretty much awful. At no point in the book does it give her any character growth as to why she acts the way she does. It mentions that she started doing these things a few months prior to the end of their junior year of high school and she progressively got worse as the story went on, but it never shows us the root of her issues. There was definitely a missed opportunity there. Ryan’s character was a tough one to pin down for me. He was a total douche at the start of the book. All he wanted was to hook up with Livvy, but by the end, he had truly fallen for her. It was almost like I didn’t want to forgive his douchebaggery just because he develops real feelings for Livvy and at times felt that Livvy should feel the same. Livvy’s character was confusing at times. She is attracted to Ryan, who is a douche if you remember, and is rebuffing his advances in the beginning but when she realizes that they have chemistry she is all in and chases after him and ignores said douchebaggery. I am honestly not sure if I liked Livvy’s character or not. At certain times I did, and others I didn’t. I wish that we could have seen things from different POVs like in the prequel novella. I would have liked to get into everyone’s head.
The romance, if it can be called that, was entertaining. Very entertaining and dramatic. And some parts got pretty heated and very graphic. This is a young adult book, but like Paper Princess by Erin Watts, it pushes some boundaries in this area. This is not a book that I think I would feel comfortable letting my high school aged child read. The book is definitely geared toward older teenagers.
The cliffhanger was totally mean. Just saying.
Overall, this is definitely a story that will suck you in. If you can’t handle teenage drama then this book may not be for you. If reading about teenagers dabbling at romance and friendships appeals to you then you’re in good shape with this one. This book is full of drama, frenemies, betrayal, love triangles, and star-crossed lovers. You won’t want to put it down once you start reading.
This book was intense. For being a “teen” novel there was a lot more sex, drugs, and alcohol than I ever would’ve anticipated. It just completely consumed the whole story line. The plot itself seemed wholly unbelievable, but if you crave the dramatic, this is for you.
Too much drama!
This is definitely a YA book! It covers the sex, OTT drama, and messy relationships that everyone seems to go through in high school. The characters are all just starting their senior year in high school. Olivia, Dustin and Emily grew up together, but when Liv leaves for the summer she returns to find their friendship has changed forever. Em has new friends and a mean attitude. Dustin warns Liv to stay away from Ryan the new boy in town but she is drawn to his hot body and flirting.
The story is full of drama and angst and although the dialogue is realistic I just got tired of reading it. The storyline just did not hit it off with me. Too crude for young adults and too immature for older ones.
I got this book hoping for a sweet romance. Instead, I was disappointed to find it had explicit content that I didn’t want to read about within the first couple of pages.
At least I didn’t get too attached before the smut started being thrown at me. 🙁
Disappointed.
I don’t even know what to say. Everything inside this book was a huge jumbled mess. There was no development, character growth or any indicator as to where the storyline was going. I am honestly unsure about what the book actually was about because of how messy it was. Friendship drama? That is my best guess and even that is pretty nondescript for the actual plot.
So we have the main character, Olivia, who supposedly is the victim in the whole friendship drama. Then we have the actual victim, Emily, who the author wants us to see as “the villain”. Last but not least we have Dustin, the catalyst of the whole conflict. He fooled around with both of them without them knowing about the other, so maybe he was the true villain in that little dispute. However he owned up the mistake unlike little miss perfect Olivia. She annoyed me pretty much from the start, thinking she had the right to be angry at and blame Emily for cheating on her with Dustin (which isn’t even close to correct) and pulling the exact same crap that she herself did. Not only was she a hypocrite but she was just so full of herself, naive and gullible, believing in anything she heard and letting others treat her like crap. That she couldn’t get mad over, but a friend fooling around with her other friend and not knowing Olivia had a thing for him? That was apparently justifiable to be mad about. I constantly wanted to climb into the story and tell her to get over herself.
The one character that succeeded to annoy me even more than Olivia was Ryan, the love interest. He was one of said persons who actually behaved badly towards Olivia and she was just okay with it. Tell me, how is it okay to pressure someone into having sex with you? And the regularly sleazy comments from him one second and the cold shoulder the next. Was that supposed to appeal to my romantic side? There was nothing romantic about this guy and I didn’t really find anything romantic with this book either. As a matter of fact, after finishing this story I’m still not sure if he was into Olivia or if he only wanted to bump uglies with her. There was not one moment that I felt any sort of emotional attachment or bond between them, which is why I don’t really see this as a romance.
You can’t of course blame it all on the guy. Since the rest of the characters were pretty shallow and bland there wasn’t much to bring to any relationship more than forced drama. The fact that the plot didn’t do much for the book (mainly because there isn’t much of a plot to talk about), any redeemable qualities this story had was microscopic. Especially the ending. It was abrupt to say the least and nothing was really solved at all. I assume that it was supposed to be a cliffhanger, but it was not really that good. A cliffhanger is a cheap trick to shock and intrigue the reader so they’ll keep reading. This ending only made me want to stop.
just ok unusual for ms murphy
When you start reading this book it’s extremely hard to put it down. The beginning is simple and it starts to grab your interest, after finishing a few chapters you just have a wave of emotions. You can’t tell it your mad, sad, excited, or pumped. It’s just an amazing book and I highly recommended it.
it was wow
Just friends was an ok book. It shows the complications of a trio of friends who are to close and hit a lot of buttons with myself because of this. The story line was good and the characters were well thought out. I would read the next book of this series.
Too much love/sex not enough story
The ending leaves you hanging on a cliff wishing someone would step on your fingers.
Yes this book is a teenage soap opera from the mind of a teenage girl, but it’s sadly realistic and very entertaining. Quickest read for me so far.
So Addicting! But Fantastic! Be prepared to take a trip down memory lane to those awkward, self centered teenager years where your parents are the enemy and you think you know it all. This teenage triangle just does not let up.
This intense and captivating story takes on some teenage issues that will have you wishing you could help these characters make the right decisions. But with teenagers experiencing love and wanting to be popular and cool, making the right decision is never in their mind set, and leads to some chaotic situations. Ms. Murphy really brings it with a Super Dose of Angst, a lot of sexy times, as well as none stop drama.
I could not put this down. So many emotions in this book to go through with these great characters such as love, hate, tears, fear, happy, sad and it all leads to a Fantastic and real story. Can’t wait to find out what happens next.
Highly Recommended! Loved it!
Received a complimentary copy from the author in exchange for an honest review!
Horrible book. No redeeming characters at this point.