Customer Reviews

The Best of Friends (Pocket Readers Guide)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

The Best of Friends is a departure for Mallery. It's not a romance novel, but a different type of love story - the story of a friendship. The story is told with Mallery's trademark humor and emotional complexity. I laughed throughout the book and cried in a couple of spots. There are no easy answers, no "good guy" and "bad guy." Just complicated situations, characters with whom you can empathize on both sides of every argument. The characters surprised me, and the story carried me away. There's a book club discussion guide at the back of the book, and I do think this would be an excellent book club selection.

If you like Jennifer Weiner and Barbara Delinsky, you'll enjoy THE BEST OF FRIENDS by Susan Mallery.

I am a huge fan of Susan Mallery's and this story did not disappoint me. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this (not to mention going through half a box of tissues while doing so). I read this in one day...I could not put it down. Loved Jayne and I loved how this story ended...for all the main characters (NOT gonna spoil the ending)! I'm hoping there will be a sequel someday featuring Rebecca. Thanks Susan for another great story!

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I read it in one day. I loved it from page one. I like the way she explained Jaynes relationship with everyone in Rebecca's family. I recomend this one to everyone. I have read Susan Mallery books for a very long time and i love them all. This one will have you cheering and wanting to hurt someone all at the same time. I can't say how much i really liked this one but then i love everything she writes.

***Semi-spoiler alert!!*** Mallery had me hooked from the beginning. Loved the characters, the story, the fact that it's set in L.A. where I used to live. However, about 2/3 of the way through, the story just seemed to fall apart for me. I didn't buy the big shift in attitude displayed by Rebecca toward Jayne. It seemed too forced, used merely as a catalyst for David and his father to come to terms with what their futures should be. The mom's behavior should easily have served as enough provocation for them. Even the ending didn't redeem this plot twist, but it DID make me hope that she will do a sequel telling Rebecca's story going forward from the last page.

The Best of Friends is different than Susan Mallery's other novels. I loved every bit of this book and found it so very moving. I am a fan of school girl crushes coming to fruition. Because I'm a simple girl that would have been enough. The added emotional depth of this novel took this book from 'happy sigh' to 'happy sigh' plus a bonus 'I can't stop thinking about these characters and wondering what happens next?' reaction. Her best work to date, I highly recommend The Best of Friends.

I almost didn't buy this book because the last books I read by Susan Mallery were less than great. Surprisingly, I enjoyed this book. After I got into it, I couldn't put it down.

Best of Friends is the story of Jayne Scott, orphaned daughter of a housekeeper; Rebecca Worden, Jayne's best friend since childhood and daughter of a wealthy family of jewelers, her brother David Worden and Elizabeth Worden, the evil matriarch of the Worden clan.

I loved the relationship between Jayne and David. I loved the dialogue they had with each other. They had a chemistry, but it was deeper than that. I liked that Jayne made David think and question his perspective on things.
I especially liked that Jayne was not wanting to be saved by David. She had no interest in David's money. The fact that he was a Worden was actually a strike against him.

I liked Rebecca and felt that she genuinely seemed to care fore Jayne. However, her behavior was too one-dimensional. Although she, and her family, kept making a point of noting that she was self-centered, it was almost too much. While I understood that Rebecca liked Jayne because it kept her from being alone, I never understood what Jayne got out of the relationship or why they would remain friends for so long. I did not like that she was so static. Over the course of the book, Jayne went from being a lap dog to the Worden's to an independent woman relying on herself. Rebecca never changed, if anything, she became more selfish for no apparent reason.

I had the same problem with Elizabeth. She was terrible to Jayne. She was terrible to her husband and she was terrible to her daughter. It was never fully explained why Rebecca and Elizabeth didn't get along. It was a feud that went back a long time, but the reader was never told when or how this feud started.

I also never understood Elizabeth's motivations. She says time and again that she only took in Jayne in order to parade her god deed in front of the others in her social set, but as a reader, I never understood why she was such a terrible person. Elizabeth, too, was static. She never changed. Even as her world began to fall apart, she remained the same bitchy person she had always been.

I also wished some time had been spent on the relationship between Blaine and Elizabeth. For most of the book, Blaine was in the background. For a book that is supposed to be about the relationships between Elizabeth, Jayne and Rebecca, this is really Jayne's book as most of the time is spent on her growth and change.

The end, in my opinion, was a bit ridiculous and felt rushed. It didn't fit with the rest of the book, which did a very good job of moving forward. The end just stopped. I wish things had been more wrapped up with Jayne and Rebecca, Jayne, Rebecca and Elizabeth, and even Blaine and Jayne. An epilogue would have been nice.

Overall, though, this was a good book well worth reading. I recommend it for the beach.

The Best of Friends by Susan Mallery
Contemporary Romance - Sept 28th, 2010
3 stars

In The Best of Friends, the author tells the dynamics of a societal family that would rival the Ewings from the Dallas TV show. It has all the markers of a well plotted story; the reader is exposed to the hubris belief and guilty pleasures of the upper class society.

Mallery has developed a great heroine in Jayne Scott, the guilty party in a web of codependency. The other codependent heroine is the wild child Rebecca Worden who is working through her own Mommy issues. Both are best friends who care for each other through tough times. The villain, Elizabeth Worden, is responsible for much of their pain and is compelling to read.

Mallery does take time to make the male characters interesting but the focus stays on the three women, who are the controlling forces behind the reactions of the other characters. This is less a romance than a book about friendship. The story is a great read that takes you behind the curtain of high society and has a lot of drama. It was a bit too much `drama' for me. But I think readers of Susan Mallery will enjoy this emotional book.

Reviewed by Patricia from the Bookaholics Romance Book Club

There were parts of this story I loved (the banter between the two main characters) and parts I didn't like at all (too many unlikable characters for the book to be fun to read). If you are a die hard Mallery fan, you should read this. If not, there are definitely other books by the author that I think you may enjoy much more.

I read the reviews. I agree that it is far from the usual romance. It took an ordinary girl and put her in a situation, where no fault of her own, she was cinderella. She didn't ask for charity, but worked at improving her self, despite the material possessions around her. I like how she learned early on that having things didn't make you happy. She was caught up in the drama and the go between. I like how she connected with David. David was no snob. Neither was his dad. The sister and her best friend was a mess. Had a best friend like that, she was described perfect. The mother, nothing you can say is nice. I liked the end, because it almost didn't work out. I would recommend this book.

This book was the biggest disappointment ever...I was so looking forward to this book too! It was like a really, really, REALLY bad soap opera...at times ridiculous. I love Susan Mallery's writing, but this book was just BAD.