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 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 … 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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Jane Green, Author of “The Friends We Keep” has written an intense, memorable, emotional, unpredictable and thought-provoking novel. Without thinking, I just went to my contact list and started to look up my college friends. The Genres for this Novel are Fiction and Women’s Fiction. There is also Romance and Suspense in this wonderful story. The timeline for this story ranges over thirty years and goes to the past or future when it pertains to the characters or events in the story. Jane Green describes her colorful characters as complex, complicated, confused, and having their own set of problems.
Evvie, Maggie, and Topher have known each other since college. There was a time when they shared their dreams and hopes with each other. They also kept secrets from one another. This story reminds me of the special friendships that I made in College, and how I want to re-connect and communicate with some of the people I somehow lost touch with. In this story, there is an edgy feel at times, and there are twists and turns as time goes on.
The three friends meet for a thirtieth reunion with many ambivalent feelings. Is it possible the dark secrets can jeopardize the future? I appreciate that the author discusses forgiveness, second chances, self-worth, growth, the importance of friendship, family, love, and hope. The author also mentions loyalty and betrayal, and friends bringing out the best in each other. I would highly recommend this thought-provoking novel.
Would read this one again!
Characters I can relate to
Silly, predictable, for someone looking for a shallow book with no imagination.
Loved the characters. Very real. I could have been one of them. True depiction of human flawed people. And a beautiful story of forgiveness too
Jane Green is one of the top Women’s Fiction authors, and this book is why. She covers a thirty-year journey of friendship between Evvie, Topher, and Maggie. Their aspirations, their loves, their heartbreaks and their undying friendship. Green covers everything in this reaching novel.
A great story of friendship across the years. Likable and relatable characters who have real life issues. Friendships have ebbs and flows and this book tells this a wonderful story. Definitely recommend!!!
Good summer tead
It was just ok. Nothing really outstanding but it is readable.
I got sucked into the characters and their relationships and then couldn’t put it down.
Not a favorite. Hard to follow characters, jumped around too much.
So well written.. I loved the unexpected twists!
Lots of drama in this book!
The happiness and heartache of true friendship. Good read.
This book was a difficult read and had characters that weren’t relatable. The storyline felt a bit weak! When old friends gather after thirty years there are lots of memories to talk about and a secret no one wants to remember. When the secret is finally revealed there is great disappointment but a realization that mistakes sometimes can never be fixed.
Friends are those that sometimes know us better than family. There through the good, the bad, and the truly ugly times of our lives. This was the first Jane Green book I had but she is now one of my favorite authors. Her writing style brought life and depth to the characters. I laughed and cried and hoped right along with them in this book. Thank you Berkley Pub for the introduction to this great book and author!
Jane Green’s stories are always poignant and just wonderful! This is a story of three friends who meet at University and follows their friendship through decades. It’s filled with love, loss, rekindled friendships and surprises.
Bestselling author Jane Green returns with an ambitious saga about three friends who meet in college, the far-reaching directions their lives take them, and how they come back together years later.
Evvie, Maggie, and Topher swore in college that they would always be friends. But as often happens, once they graduated, and embarked upon careers and relationships, they drifted apart. Green details what happens to each of the three friends.
Evvie learned in college to use medications to stay thin and attractive, and parlayed that knowledge into a highly successful career as a model. However, beauty fades and so did Evvie’s career as she allowed emotional eating to take over. She had a brief, but momentous affair with a married man and bore his son. A son that she has steadfastly kept away from Maggie and Topher.
Maggie had a crush on Ben when they were in college. In fact, they called him “Evil Ben” because he was a grumpy bartender in the same local pub where Evvie work. Even in college, Ben’s drinking was problematic. A chance meeting several years after graduation brought Maggie and Ben back together and they married, intending to start a family. Through Maggie, Green illustrates that life doesn’t always work out the way we plan, especially when one is either to naive or choose not to appreciate the significance of obstacles that present themselves.
In college, Topher thought he was just not a sexual being. He didn’t like to be touched by anyone, male or female. After college he pursued and enjoyed a career as an actor, scoring a steady gig on a popular daytime drama. And he discovered his sexual orientation and found love within a committed, if not passionate, relationship, as well as from supportive friends. After the death of his beloved partner, Topher enjoys a platonic relationship with an older gentleman and moves in with him. An inadvertent but irresponsible lapse in judgment derails his career and tarnishes his reputation and he is eventually forced to confront the horror he endured as a child. A horror that explains fully why true emotional intimacy has always evaded him.
The three friends are reunited at their thirtieth college reunion, and they realize how deeply they all still care about each other. They fall right back into their old patterns — laughing, talking, drinking. Each of them has reached a crossroads in his/her life, and they realize that they not only like each other. They also need each other. Maggie has the perfect solution and all is well, despite the fact that Evvie has been keeping an explosive secret that, if revealed, will destroy the relationship that she has re-established with Maggie and Topher.
In true Green fashion, that secret has far-reaching ramifications for her three characters. She capably explores its impact upon each of them as they grapple with information that changes the basic facts they have assumed about each other. Green focuses on themes including taking responsibility for one’s own actions and choices, the consequences of an inability to appreciate the importance of evidence of trouble, forgiveness, and what it means to be a family. Through her three characters, she also examines how destructive disappointment can be and the importance of being able to move past it in order to find a new, if not predicted or foreseen, normal.
The fact that the ending of The Friends We Keep is thoroughly predictable does not detract from the enjoyment of sharing the journeys of Green’s three characters. Each of them is highly flawed, but so thoroughly human that they are empathetic and likable in spite of their shortcomings. Each of them makes terrible choices and is required to confront the fall-out from their own behavior. Green never lets the book’s pace drag as she navigates between the perspectives of each character over the course of more than three decades.
The Friends We Keep is engrossing and her characters are endearing — precisely the kind of book to throw in one’s beach bag and enjoy while lounging by a pool or on the shore.
Thanks to NetGalley for an Advance Reader’s Copy of the book.
Secrets, inner demons, and the masks that slip on with every false smile we wear. Jane Green uses 3 reunited friendships to teach us that to be flawed is to be human and we are all worthy of acceptance and forgiveness, most importantly from our own self. I absolutely loved this book. Check it out.
Enjoyable summer read about friendship and keeping secrets. It had a good ending that came together well without feeling forced