Customer Reviews

Between Husbands and Friends

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I just finished Between Hubands and Friends and I feel like crying into my pillow! Every character seemed so alive to me. The emotions were so honest and touched on so many segments of friendship and marriage...I've known "Lucy", I've known "Kate". I don't remember ever reading a book that honestly brought me to tears as if it were absolutely real. Thank you Nancy Thayer for a wonderful, wonderful book. Please write another...soon!

I'm a long time fan of Nancy Thayer and have read everything that she's ever written. She has a gift for capturing the ins and outs of family life and the conflicting emotions that women go through as they marry and have children. wondering is this all there is or was I meant for greater things?

This novel is no exception. She writes convincingly of what it's like to be a mother of young children. In one chapter, the main character, Lucy, is sitting in her attic, seeking some much needed solitude, and thinking that while she is happy with her life, could she have done more with it. Should she have? She wonders what her beloved aunt, an adventerous free spirit would think of her life today if she were still alive. She also captures perfectly the longing that women feel to find that perfect friend, someone they "click" with instantly and can let loose and be themselves without fear of censor or judgement.

The only flaw in this book is the soapy plot involving the paternity of Lucy's son and using a potentially fatal genetic disease to propel the plot forward. This has been done in countless novels, including Daybreak by Belva Plain, who used it much more effectively.

Aside from that minor quibble, this is a good book to enjoy while lazing in the sun on a warm summer day.

If reality hasn't intruded into my daily life, I think I would have finished this book in an afternoon. It's that engrossing.

This book explores the relationships between Kate and Lucy ~~ two women with two children and their husbands. It is a complicated relationship burdened with secrets and dreams. When Lucy finds out that her son is diagonosed with cystic fibrosis, the relationships began to unravel.

I would have given this book a five ~~ but when Lucy blurted out her great secret, it was written very awkwardly and there wasn't enough depth into the story to give the readers why she panicked like she did. And Lucy was way too pact with her husband's trangressions with her best friend ~~ if it was me, despite me making the same mistake seven years earlier ~~ I would still be raging and fighting for my husband instead of taking everything passively and hiding my head.

Other than that, this book is well-written and enjoyable!! I really hated to put it down ~~ as I want some answers to my questions! But it is thoroughly enjoyable! I highly recommend this book to anyone with an afternoon off from work. It's one of those lazy days to spend on this book. Take it out to your hammock and swing in the spring breeze while reading this book!

4-25-02

This nobel is set on Nantucket Island and not surprisingly, a real page turner.
Ms. Thayer introduces us to two famlies; the West family and the Cunnighams, and their kids. Lucy West and Kate Cunningham have been friends for years and carry each other secrets.Their husbands have also become great friends along with their children; so one can imagine what their wonderful August vacations are like. Through an inheritance of a home in Nantucket island from Lucy West's aunt, they are able to enjoy the sea, sun, sailing and relaxing, along with tasty meals of lobster and corn which they adore.
The characterisation is great. Ms Thayer makes you feel like they are part of your family and you start to cherish and care for their lives. But aren't these families a little too perfect? Some will say yes, other will say no; they are indeed families and friends like that.......perfect.
When you get into the story you will see how a fine friendship like theirs can sometimes turn awry over one brisk mistake; a slight brush with infidelity. It's a short novel but worth it in many ways so I have given it five stars. Thanks for your lovely book Nancy Thayer.

Nutface
October 22nd 2001

I like Nancy Thayer's books, and was glad to find one at the library that I'd never read. Unfortunately, this one wasn't worth the effort. I found Kate, Max, Lucy and Chip to be thoroughly unlikable, self-absorbed, immature people. Maybe I'm naive, but I'd like to think that the majority of us married people out there don't have continual fantasies about members of the opposite sex! Lucy and Kate leave their two small children with a babysitter so that they can go bar hopping and dance with grungy strange men. They both get drunk, Kate goes off with the stranger she picks up and sleeps with him, and Lucy drives home drunk and makes the babysitter walk home. What am I missing!!! I don't know anybody who acts this way! It's hard to like a book when you find all of the characters so thoroughly reprehensible. They should find a nice foster home for Jeremy and Margaret.

The emotions are exaggerated, the plot a bit contrived, and the characters somewhat stereotypical. Still, this is an inviting book to while the day away with. Nancy Thayer brings her considerable talent to bear in this story of two families that truly love each other. The wives are best friends, the husbands very close, the children devoted to each other. Into this idyllic setting come secrets, death, terminal illness, infidelity, divorce, and all the other elements that make for an interesting read.

Protagonist Lucy West married young and, although she loves her husband Max, she is vulnerable to other men. Her character is tested as she decides to whom she owes more loyalty---her husband or her best friend Kate. Over the course of a ten-year friendship, husbands are swapped and friendship is tested to its limits as Thayer takes the reader back and forth in time in this soap operaesque saga set in Nantucket and surroundings.

What could have been a strong book on the power of friendship falters slightly by forced situations that are wrapped up a bit too neatly for this reader's taste. Still, this is a worthwhile story, though not as intriguing as Thayer's earlier effort, THREE WOMEN AT THE WATER'S EDGE, which I would whole-heartedly recommend.

The book profiles Lucy and the development of her marriage, children, and relationship with her best friend, and best friend's family. The intertwining lives of the two families through their summers sharing a house in Nantucket becomes the focus of the story.

Although the issues of infidelity and a child's serious illness may seem like a TV drama, the writing rises above that. It involves you in Lucy's thoughts and feelings through the ups and downs of their lives. A miscarriage, a spouse's depression, and other difficulties are touchingly woven into the story.

One glitch in the book is the blurting out of secrets that rends the families apart. It's hard to imagine, even under stress, that Lucy would make that revelation so baldly and with such poor timing. The repercussions from that incident reverberate through the final 100 pages of the book.

I found the relationships meaningful and certainly will look for more Nancy Thayer' novels to read. Particularly enjoyable are her descriptions of small town life, of children and of Nantucket. She also has a very natural way with conversations and a character's thought process.

I left something out of my last review of this book. The publisher really missed the boat here - there were more typos in this book than I have seen in any other! In addition, there was one substantive mistake. Lucy is at home one evening and the book says that it is "1 o'clock in the evening." (I am assuming that they meant 1 o'clock in the morning!) Anyway, a short time after that, on that same evening, Lucy decides to go see if Max is in his office. The narrative says that it was now "after midnight." Ooopppssss. (Forgive me, I am usually not this nit-picky about things, but when I read the 6th or 7th typo I started to get annoyed with everything else.)

Between Husbands and Friends made me feel comfortable in seeing what I really wanted out of a best friend relationship. I could really relate to the women becoming such good friends and the ups and downs that they went through. What happened in the book really didn't turn me off, but it was a little sad. I am looking forward to reading more of Nancy Thayer's book.

I appreciated how this book began, and knew something "bad" was lurking around the corner. But I was appalled to find out that Lucy would compromise her morals so easily in order to "awaken her inner self." People are defined by what they do when no one else knows...and for Lucy to break her vows--not only the ones spoken to her husband but also implied to her best friend is abhorrent. That is when the book began to fade for me. And then the dire consequences. "The sins of the mother nad father are passed on to the children." What a silly analysis to make--that Jeremy is sick becasue his parents were unfaithful..it makes Jeremy's character a caricature. There were so many ways for this to go. And that Lucy didn't rail against her husband and Kate for "getting her back?" What kind of sick world do they live in in Sussex??

Very frustrating outcome for what began as a beaautiful story of friendships at an older age and how you compromise yourself to love your friends.