Customer Reviews

Best Friends Forever: A Novel

5 star:		(49)
4 star:		(36)
3 star:		(48)
2 star:		(53)
1 star:		(40)

 

 

I have been a fan of Jennifer Weiner since her first book. However, in the last few years, I have felt as though she has walked away from her "chick lit" writing and has created more contemporary fiction for women and although I have seen Best Friends Forever referred to as chick lit, I would have to disagree.

Best Friends Forever is the newest book by Weiner and features Addie and Valerie who were best friends in primary school and ended up at opposite ends of the popularity chain in high school, which pretty much separated them until they meet up again as adults. Although they haven't kept in touch at all, Valerie will show up on the other's doorstep, in full bloom trouble - asking for help in this whoddunnit type of mini-mystery, intertwined with the two women trying to find themselves and each other throughout the storyline. There is a message here - which basically is that you never know what will happen in your life and looks and appearance can be deceiving and that, in your life, friendship and support are extremely important and worth fighting for.

While there are some cute episodes and some actually touching moments, I did not find this book all that interesting. The premise is kind of usual and I feel as though I have read this story, in different installments, throughout the years. The main characters are okay and the writing is fine, but I just did not find myself getting all involved and committed to this book and I certainly would not qualify this one as chick litty at all.

When Addie and Valerie became neighbors as children, Addie was certain they would remain BFFs forever. However a negative high school incident left Addie (the overweight and loyal friend) hurt--and tore the two into two directions where they remained until, 15 years later, Valerie (high school cheerleader, now weather girl) entered Addie's life again...and with blood on her sleeve and in need of help.

Best Friends Forever is a story of suspense, friendship, adventure and secrets and is told via 1st person and 3rd person from two different characters and also weaves tales of the past into the present via flashbacks. Where these elements could be awkward if not done well, it actually not only flows perfectly, but adds great interest for the reader.

In spite of having read several great books recently I hadn't realized that the range of emotion (humor, suspense, love, tears, revenge...) within "Best Friends Forever" was just what I needed til I read it.

The character development is so deep that I felt certain the author must "know" pieces of these characters somehow in real life or experienced some of what she described within her own--Great depths to their personalities and interactions. You truly read into their souls and she captures details in her words that make for deep insight.

I also felt I was taken from childhood to adulthood in great detail (some will feel as though they are right back in highschool with her descriptions. ) and I both cried and laughed...it's actually a very deep story and nothing felt forced or contrived to me.

You'll want to go through the adventure of Addie and Val so much that you may need to grab your booklight for this one...I found it to be a true "page turner".

I felt empathy for Addie's struggles and adored Jordan and was captured by a roller coaster of emotions for Valerie.

And...I'm typically not a person you can surprise with a twist at the end of a book; I always see it coming it seems. But this one was a surprise.

To wrap up a tale and include such a range of emotion...suspense, heartbreak, humor, romance, and surprise all intertwined made for a truly great summer read.

Afterall, what more is left?!

Conclusion: excellent read...includes great characters, descriptions, adventure and a range of emotions spliced with some humor. A+

I finished the novel last night and really enjoyed it. Jen Weiner has such a lot of range. She can go from poignant to laugh-out-loud in just a few sentences. The novel is about a friendship that goes sour and then is resurrected and often has a madcap, Thelma and Louise-feel, especially when the two friends are "on the lam." Weiner fleshes out minor characters --her self-assured brother who meets with tragedy is particularly memorable--and keeps the pacing brisk, serving up a bit of a twist at the end.
My favorite part of the novel was the flashbacks to the girls' childhoods. Jen brilliantly captures what it feels like to be ten and to have a very best friend with whom you share everything.

I'm about halfway through this book, and it's unlikely that I'll finish it. My problems with it include:
1) The story is not at all believable. I can't imagine, even for a second, that a chief of police, even in a small town, would launch an extensive investigation into a puddle of blood. No body, no injured party filing a complaint, no witness who saw someone get hurt. Just a puddle of blood. And it wasn't even a big puddle. How much time has this guy got on his hands? I also don't believe that Addie would go along with Val's wacky road trip. Nothing we know about her suggests that she would. So, basically, the whole premise is ridiculous.
2) I'm irritated about all of the key plot points that are strategically held back until some later moment in the book. I know it's supposed to create tension, but it was just irritating. It also made it hard to get to know the characters.
3) I don't really care about anyone in the book. Sorry, but they're all so bland, it's difficult.
4) Where's the humor? Jennifer Weiner's strong point is humor. Nobody in this book is funny, or even seems to have much of a personality.
5) It's very predictable. I can't be the only one who knew what the strange abdominal growth was the moment it was first mentioned.
I loved "Good in Bed," but it seems to me that Ms. Weiner's books are getting progressively less entertaining. They mostly have the same themes - there's always a traumatized overweight girl, and a friend (or sister) who is ditzy but has a heart of gold. Honestly, it's getting old. I'm glad I got this book from the library instead of buying it. I doubt I'll even bother to check out the next one.

I have read some of Jennifer Weiner's work in the past and enjoyed it. I was initially intrigued by the setup of this novel, and thought that it might perhaps have promise. I enjoy psychological tales and so I thought I would be reading a book about how the threads of friendship had frayed. While what I read was something like this, it was also vastly different from what I had expected. Fair warning: there will be many spoilers in this review.

Addie must be one of the most inane and one of the stupidest characters in the history of literature. Her struggles with her weight and the cruelty of her classmates was certainly reasons for giving the character sympathy. However, she was just plain stupid. I found it absurd that when Val, who treated Addie abysmally, turns up at Addie's door and says she thinks she may have killed someone, Addie quickly gets over her aversion to her former friend and to doing anything unsavory, and become a willing partner in would-be crime. Given that Val was Addie's only friend and that Val threw Addie to the wolves in high school, I found it laughable that Addie would have even given the woman the time of day.

I was also initially interested in hints being dropped about Vijay, but as soon as he came into the picture, I was left scratching my head. I couldn't quite figure out what it was that Addie had found so irresistible about him. He's much older than her and not described in a way that makes him sound all that attractive. Is it simply because he talks to her? Because he notices that she's alive. I found it just a ridiculous setup for a romance. Add to this the fact that he up front tells her that he's in it for the fun of cheating on his wife, and that Addie isn't his first, and I just wanted to reach through the book and shake some sense into Addie. Come on. What woman with half a brain couldn't see that situation had "disaster" written all over it? I won't even go into how brainless I found her birth control methods.

Next up, we have Val. I don't really need to go into much detail here because she is, simply, a narcissistic witch. I found nothing at all to like about Val, even when she was a child. I suppose the reader is supposed to feel sorry for Val because she has a neglectful, awful mother. While this is, indeed, sad, Val grows up to be just as horrible as the mother she likes to deride. Every time she would complain to Addie about her childhood, I wished Addie would say something like, "Um, Val? Isn't this the pot calling the kettle black?"

Lastly, we will end with the romantic interest Jordan. The fact that he was meant to be the knight in shining armor was so glaring obvious. I can't say I found him all that attractive, given his predilection for booze and his very disturbing fondness for women in children's programs. This isn't enough, though, and he must proceed to act in a manner that is so contrary to everything a reader would expect a police chief to be that it simply defies explanation. Yes, fiction asks us to suspend disbelief, but a book like this is meant to be a mirror of our own reality. The reality is that, if a police chief ever behaved the way Jordan did, he'd be out of a job so quickly his head would spin. The one redeeming feature I saw to this character and his story was that the description of how fertility issues led to the disintegration of his marriage was interesting. His story should have just been left at that.

Aside from the awful character, this book is just chock full of completely ridiculous situation, such as the "bank robbery" staged by Val and Addie. Sure, Addie ultimately takes the money out of her account, so no harm, no foul, right? Somehow, though, I think that pretending to rob a bank would get you into a whole heap of trouble, not to mention fleeing town in the wake of what is initially presumed to be a murder.

This book was just terrible. I can't believe I wasted my time with the library's Kindle reading this poor excuse for literature.

So, I'm 3/4 of the way through Jennifer Weiner's latest, "Best Friends Forever". All I can say is that J. Weiner better starting trying now to prove she's never read "Night Swimming" by Robin Schwarz. If she's read it, she's got problems. And obviously she's read it. "Best Friends Forever" is the same book as "Night Swimming", but just a little more depressing. Here's the run down of similarities:

BFF: Overweight unhappy female protagonist
NS: Overweight unhappy femal protagonist

BFF: Protagonist binge eats in private, suffers from intense shame as a result
NS: Protagonist binge eats in private, suffers from intense shame as a result

BFF: Protagonist serves as a caregiver for her ill mother
NS: BFF: Protagonist serves as a caregiver for her ill mother

BFF: Protagonist lives alone as an adult in her childhood home after everyone in her family dies a tragic death
NS: Protagonist lives alone as an adult in her childhood home after everyone in her family dies a tragic death

BFF: Protagonist suspects she has cancer
NS: Protagonist misdiagnosed and thus thinks she has cancer

BFF: Protagoniststarts swimming laps and loses a bunch of weight, thereby transforming herself into a thin person for the first time in her life
NS: Protagonist starts swimming laps and loses a bunch of weight, thereby transforming herself into a thin person for the first time in her life

BFF: Protagonist has a best friend during her childhood who she has a fight with over a boy and they are estranged for many years
NS: Protagonist has a best friend during her childhood who she has a fight with over a boy and they are estranged for many years

BFF: Protagonist and best friend pretend to rob a bank, drive south
NS: Protagonist robs a bank, drives south

BFF: Kindly police officer follows protagonist while she's on the lam
NS: Kindly police officer follows protagonist while she's on the lam

BFF: Protagonist and previously estranged best friend re-unite after many years, become best friends again, and "save" each other
NS: Protagonist and previously estranged best friend re-unite after many years, become best friends again, and "save" each other

J. Wein, I'd say you better hope Robin Schwarz does't read BFF or she's got one hell of a lawsuit....

I've been a devoted fan of Jennifer Weiner's since her first book. What I've always admired about her was her ability to create believable, multi-faceted characters and compelling, well-written plots, even in a genre ("chick lit") that doesn't get much respect. I thought it took a certain courage for an Ivy-educated author to snub her nose at the many critics of this genre and prove you could craft books that were entertaining and relevant but still well-written. It made it all the more disappointing for me, then, to read this book. Unfortunately, Weiner seems to have assimilated and taken to heart the criticisms of chick-lit haters, and the book suffers for it.

There are two points Weiner has expounded on in her blog and in various articles for years now quite extensively: 1) that she believes in writing interesting, engrossing books, even if such plots are sneered on by the acclaimed literary establishment and 2) she doesn't believe in writing the typical "fat woman lives a life of angst but then loses the weight and magically gets a better life" plots. To my surprise and disappointment, she's violated both of those principles in this book.

Re point #1, while reading this book, I got the very strong impression that I was reading one of those "literary" books that tries so hard to be avante-garde and clever, but just turns out boring. I read widely from a variety of genres, time periods, and languages, so I'm not saying this book had to be just like her others -- but what all good books have in common is a well-developed, interesting plot. Frankly, this one didn't have that. There just wasn't much that happened, and what did didn't make much sense and didn't hold my interest.

Re point #2, perhaps I should be upfront and say that I'm not someone who is or has ever been overweight, so maybe I can't speak objectively about that issue. But the whole plotline of Addie's burgeoning weight gain and subsequent weight loss just seemed so overdone. Did we really need to have page after page describing the snacks she bought, how she stayed up late eating them, her subsequent self-hate, etc.? And then of course, once she loses the weight, her life turns around (she gets a guy, the baby she wants, her friend comes back . . .). Maintaining a healthy weight is certainly commendable, but I feel it just ate up too much plot time -- and given Weiner's previous very strong comments about not portraying heavy women as pathetic losers who only get a life when they lose the weight, I wonder why she made these exact plot choices.

I hesitate to say that Weiner should stick to what she knows, because we should all stretch ourselves and try new things. But in the future, if she tries new genres, I hope she remembers the core writing principles that brought her such popularity and acclaim in the first place.

I kept rolling my eyes and saying to myself..."SAY WHAT"?

First of all, the character of Valerie, who shows up on Addie's doorstep and wants to go back to being best friends after fifteen years of absenteeism and after having really messed Addie over in high school, nope doesn't work for me.

Next Addie just throws her entire life over and goes for a joyride to Key West after said "friend" Valerie waltzes back into her life. Does not work for me again.

The two "friends" go to a bank where Addie withdraws ten thousand dollars of spending money for a trip to Key West and Valerie does not pay for anything. Nope still not working for me.

Valerie attempts to rob the bank teller when Addie makes the withdrawal. Then out of the goodness of her heart, Addie leaves $2000 for the bank teller since the bank teller says it is okay to rob her if Addie gives her $2000. Seriously flawed. In reality, everybody would have been arrested.

I can go on and on. The police detective who enters Addie's house without a warrant and meanders through the house smelling her clothing?????? Oh puhlllllllease.

Last but not least, do we really have to know how many times the police detective masturbates and to top it off how he masturbates and then cleans up after himself? Give me a break.

I could go on and on. Yes there is more that makes the book totally unrealistic.

The ending was abrupt and again I raised my eyebrows and said, "HUH"? Don't spend good money on this unless you are such a fan of Jennifer Weiner that you can't help yourself.

I have enjoyed all of Weiner's books and eagerly anticipated this one. I found Val's character to be shallow and stereotypical and her relationship with Addie was unrealistic. The story was very predictable and didn't grab me with an emotional connection like her other books have. What a disappointment.

I am not a big fan of chick lit in general but this was awful for any genre. The writing was as good as any college student could produce in a weekend. It was a cut-rate theft of Thelma and Louise in some sections. I donated it to my local library because I thought it was a better alternative than my recycling bin. Don't waste your money.