Customer Reviews

Frenemies

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

FRENEMIES by Megan Crane
September 26, 2007

Rating: 4 Stars

FRENEMIES was a pleasant surprise for me. It's chick lit but one of the better ones I've read in the past few years, where a lot in this genre is starting to sound the same. The main character, Gus (Augusta) is about to turn 30 and she's not doing well in regards to a relationship that went sour. Her boyfriend has ended up with a college friend, and she feels betrayed. Since the breakup, Gus has begun to act up in public. In the opening chapter we will get a good idea how bad off Gus is, when she throws a tantrum in front of many of her friends in a public bar because Nate and ex-friend Helen have shown up as well. It doesn't help that they have mutual friends and have been friends since college.

The book is funny and smart, with a main character that is not one-dimensional as oftentimes happens in books of this genre. Even her friends are interesting, and have their own issues to deal with.I laughed a lot while I read this book, and can honestly say I enjoyed it. I definitely recommend FRENEMIES.

This book would be much more believable if the main characters were on the cusp of turning 20 instead of 30. Gus (the main character) & her friends spend all of their time chasing the wrong men & obsessing over every little thing they do. They create loud inappropriate scenes in public, start rumors about people they don't like, & spend an inordinate amount of time detailing the physical short comings of both themselves and others. These ladies are characterized as smart, educated women with meaningful careers, and yet their actions more closely resemble that of insecure, image conscious teenagers desperate to hang out with the cool kids. The author says she was inspired by the movie "Mean Girls", and I would assume wanted to show what happens when the "mean girls" reach the next stage of the life. The problem is that while there will always be some women who never grow out of the mean catty teenager phrase, most of us do. As an almost 30 year old adult, I have no problem avoiding the "mean girls;" its no longer high school & they no longer control the lunch table. This book is definitely chick lit at its worst; there is nothing funny or entertaining about it. Mostly it just makes me sad that anyone thinks this is how grown women act.

but doesn't always get the female characters right. Not to say that I didn't love this book and think that Megan Crane is a excellent writer, her style is very casual and humorous, and boy does she know something about sexual tension. But I found Gus to be a little too self-indulgent, and she gave Helen such little value that it is a wonder they were ever friends to begin with. Don't people drop friends like that by the time they are 30? Or if they don't totally get rid of them, don't they minimize their contact with them? And I doubt that Helen would be so bold to assume that Gus would just get over the boyfriend stealing. However, I did like Henry quite a lot, and the relationships with her other friends, who at times also seemed like frenemies. Gus' evolution, while painful, did leave the reader with the hope that growing up may not be easy, but there's a light at the end of the tunnel, and sometimes you lose friends along the way.
I guess the final thought I had as I was finishing this book was about 20something/30something women and the maturation of friendship. Makes me reevaluate how I treat my own friends, as well myself. Because when it comes down to it, are you your own worst frenemy? Thanks again Megan, looking forward to another great book.

In the "About the Author" portion of the book, Megan Crane says that she was inspired to write this book after going to see Mean Girls with her boyfriend. Once I read that, the whole book made sense.

I think it is definitely worth writing a book about the ups and downs of friendships, especially between women, but Crane has written a book about the friendships of 30 year old women in the style of a movie written for teenagers (and don't get me wrong - I watched Mean Girls too!). I think there's a difference between the friendships and cattiness of high school cliques and the deep bonds of women who have known each other for a decade in adulthood.

The writing was strained. There were at least five different storylines going on, each of them painfully obvious, and Crane lacks the skill to turn words in the style of many of the better chick-lit authors.

The story - Augusta is a librarian who has two close friends, but has a large group of friends who always invite her to parties (never mind that these friends are nameless - they're just friends who host an engagement party or a Christmas party or something - she never mentions who those friends are!). She had been dating a guy she's known since college - he was the Hot Guy, and she dated him for four months when she caught him cheating on her with another one of their social set (a "that girl" who always has guys falling all over her).

So Gus gets mad at the girl, tries to get the guy back (why??) and has all these self-discoveries about adulthood, but this was another problem of mine with the writing - it was all so obvious! And plots and subplots just kind of appeared and disappeared during the whole book. Near the end we find out all kinds of things about Gus's boss, which is supposed to make us (and Gus) think about her fights with her friends, but it comes off all weird because the boss hasn't said a word for the entire book. Also, it seems like this book was written in stages. Like when Gus was having a heated conversation, she thought it felt like she was having a Tori Amos moment. And then, three pages later, one of her friends yells at another one for constantly living in a Tori Amos song. So I think maybe Little Earthquakes was on in the background as she was writing those pages???

Anyway, there are so many great books out there that cover areas like this - Something Borrowed by Emily Griffin, for example, is a much better choice.

I enjoyed this book from start to finish. Didn't want to put it down. Made me laugh.

I'm a huge Megan Crane fan. i've loved all of her books and I think this is her best, yet. Anyone with interesting and important friendships will appreciate this work. Gus and her friends are wickedly funny, intelligent, engaging and REAL. I made the mistake of starting this book as I crawled into bed for an early night - i couldn't put it down and was up all night. I hope someone options the film rights!

I'm not a book worm by any means, and it takes a lot to keep me entertained. This book definately succeeded in peaking my interest, I finished it in two days! A must read for any woman who know that perfectly catty friend in your life.

This was too chick lit for me, not enough romance. I did not find it funny or enjoyable. I wanted it to be over. I did not care for the way the three female friends acted. They lied to each other and to themselves. Georgia lusted after Henry for many years but it wasn't returned, so she spread lies about him. Her friends supported her by believing the lies and calling Henry "Satan" and a "slut". Amy was mad that her friends didn't "guess" that she was pregnant, when her only hint had been she wasn't drinking because she was the designated driver. The main female character Gus was dumped by Nate. Gus was obsessive about getting him back and refused to acknowledge the truth about him, herself and another guy who was right for her. One character described these three as playing their "girl games." Most of the story was about Gus' obsession with Nate and her related actions.

I planned to give this 1 star, but upgraded it to 2 stars solely due to one paragraph in the book on page 265, quoted below. I liked this quote. It was thought provoking and might be good advice for what to do after a fight among friends or family.

"It had seemed so foreign to me - the idea that you could move forward without a painful airing of grievances on both sides. But maybe Minerva had it right - maybe it wasn't necessary to pick apart pain. Maybe some things just weren't worth fighting about. Some friends weren't friends anymore, but family - and there were different rules for family. It didn't make sense to sit down with family and detail all the reasons they'd upset you - for many reasons, not least among them the fact that they could whip out a checklist of your transgressions themselves. And after you'd both picked apart the carcasses, why would you want to be friends again? Maybe the important thing was to recognize that everyone felt wronged and slighted - but the point worth concentrating on was that everyone loved each other. If we worked from that premise, we should be fine."

Story length: 289 pages. Sexual language: none. Number of sex scenes: 2. Length of sex scenes: 1 was a paragraph and 1 was a sentence. These scenes were told/referred to and not shown or described in detail. Setting: current day Boston area. Copyright: 2007. Genre: chick lit with romantic motivations.

I had high expectations for this book because I loved Megan Crane's English as a Second Language. However, her second book Everyone Else's Girl wasn't nearly as great as the first. Needless to say, I was very disappointed in Frenemies. I didn't find it all that entertaining. It seemed to drag on in some parts and there didn't really seem to be anything exciting happening in the story to move it along quicker.

I still have hopes that her next novel will be like her first so I can continue to read her books.

Another read from Megan Crane. Book arrived on time and in great condition, just haven't read it yet!