Helen Warner

Favorite Quotes:

Anton was her tutor and over the course of her first year, Emily had grown increasingly attracted to him. In his late thirties, he was tall, tanned, blond and devastatingly charming. He was also devastatingly married with two young children.

Melissa’s love life was non-existent. Well, that wasn’t strictly true. Melissa’s sex life was excellent. It was just that there wasn’t much love involved in any of her liaisons…

She had so much to apologize for that if she started show more now, until the end of her life it wouldn’t be enough.

Can’t you hunt for Mr Right while still enjoying the company of Mr Wrong?

My Review:

I was immediately captivated by the vividly descriptive writing style and fell headlong into the engaging and original story of four uniquely compelling women who had met and bonded as teens while living in close quarters during their first year of college. The four had retained a special and supportive bond for over twenty years while enduring harrowing events, spats, betrayals, addictions, illnesses, abuse, pregnancies, child rearing, love affairs, professional gains, and tragic loss. They thought they knew each other inside out, although each had at least one long-held secret, indiscretion, or shameful transgression that remained unknown to the others.

While their tale would have been fodder for Jerry Springer or a daytime soap if handled differently, Ms. Warner kept it classy and infinitely intriguing. The storylines were original, relevant, frightfully realistic, and unpredictable, while the writing was keenly honed, hypnotically engrossing, and hit all the feels. I adored most of the characters, with my favorite being the steadfast and gallant Steve, although the four women were devastatingly infuriating as well as fascinating, insightful, stubborn, and exasperating. At times, they were disappointingly weak and repellent then, thankfully later they were allowed to be surprisingly strong. Despite their occasional periods of envy and annoyances, they remained unquestionably loyal to each other through it all. At various times, I had been disappointed with each to the point of gnashing my teeth, although I was more than pleased with their personal development and emotional maturity by the deeply satisfying conclusion.

And as a bonus, I learned a new phrase to add to my ever-expanding Brit Word list, “knees up,” which Mr. Google told me was a noun meaning a lively party. Which is something we should have at every opportunity. show less

Think of your closest friends. Now imagine that you are lucky enough to have a girls weekend with them every year. If you live close to each other and see each other constantly, the weekend is generally a happy escape from the pressures and duties of daily life. On the other hand, if you don't often see these friends, the weekend offers a wonderful chance to reconnect and to catch up in a relaxed atmosphere. Now imagine doing this annually for fifteen years. How many life changes and show more challenges, good and bad, will come up over such a long span of time? These imaginings are exactly what Helen Warner's novel, The Story of Our Lives, offers to readers.

Sophie, Melissa, Amy, and Emily have been friends since living together their first year of university. Now they are launched in the real world but they make it a point to get together every year for a long weekend. The women are very different personalities and lead very different lives but they retain a strong and caring bond with each other, despite the inevitable secrets, large and small, they each carry. As their lives unscroll through the novel, the women will face many different issues: love and sex, infidelity, marriage, motherhood, postpartum depression, domestic abuse, drug addiction, miscarriage, and life-threatening illness among others. They face these issues both alone and collectively, as the friends rally around each other and offer each other some hard truths. But even amongst this close knit group, there is at least one explosive, potentially life and group altering secret.

The novel spans fifteen years in the friends' lives. Each section starts with a major true news event from the year (1997 through 2012) to ground the following short chapters in that time. Each section takes place during that year's girls weekend, where the friends will come together to confront the biggest issue of one of their lives to date. Because of this, the first chapter of every year starts with the women arriving for the weekend but quickly segues into flashbacks of the previous year giving added background to the important issue. This narrative structure took a bit of getting used to in the beginning but because of its consistency throughout the novel, eventually it became unobtrusive. The four women are all main characters but despite the third person omniscient narration, Sophie is more rounded out than the others and is just slightly more of the focus, the glue that holds the women together. There is not a strong through plot here for much of the book; the novel is episodic in feel with quick snapshots of the incidents in their lives so it is no surprise to discover Warner works in television and the book itself feels as if it would easily translate to the small screen. The description of each vacation rental and the women's arrivals each year might seem slightly repetitious but the progression of size and luxury in the homes they rent reflects the superficial progression in their lives as well. It is, of course, only after they settle in that they can confront the harder work of friendship, what it can support, what it can endure, and what it celebrates. The novel is generally breezy despite the myriad of heavy topics and it's a fast and easy read. Those who enjoy drama, soap operas, and escapist fiction will enjoy this for sure. show less

My honest opinion of this book is that it's really quite poor. It's strange because everything in it is so cliche and predictable, and yet really unbelievable at the same time.

I struggled to like the main character Anna. She seemed so ungrateful and whingey, just not what the protagonist should be like if you want readers to relate to her. The fact that she spent 10 years of her life deeply in love with her teenage boyfriend seems a bit ridiculous, because if she really cared that much show more about him she would have picked up the phone and called him long ago.
As for Toby, he wasn't likable either. There wasn't much description of his looks either, of what made him stand out so much so that Anna had to devote half of her life to him. To me, he sounded just as pathetic.
Clare was a great character, she was strong, although along came the cliche that she was the career driven lawyer, of course. However, as soon as James came along, I felt that we lost her, because suddenly she had turned to Anna and become a complete wreck over a man.
Ella was the character we were all supposed to hate. I thought that she had way too many bad characteristics for one person, like the author had watched loads of Mean Girls-type chick flicks and decided to roll every single character into one. When it was all put together it just sounded too ridiculous, but by the big happy ending we all like her again of course.
Rachel was the only character I thought was normal, although her part of the story was pretty boring. Jilted at the altar, but she's happy for Toby! Oh yay now we're near the end of the story she feels nothing for him and can settle down with Marco, how convenient.
Readable but so predictable and cliched. Characters dull and irritating. show less

This is a wonderful story about 4 friends during 20 years of their lives. Even though they are best friends, they all live very different lives and only get together for an occasional weekend. More importantly, even though they are best friends who tell each other everything -- they are all keeping secrets from each other. Can their friendship survive when these secrets are brought out into the open?

The novel is set up in time periods based on the friends' weekend get-aways. Each section show more starts with a short comment about what is going on in the world - ex Princess Diane died or the search for Madeline McCain - to put the time period in perspective. The four friends are:
Sophie (my favorite) who moved in with her boyfriend after her first year of college and follows a fairly sensible life - buys a house, has a baby but when she can't bond with her baby, we start to learn more about her. She was always the voice of reason among the four friends.
Melissa is always ready for a good time - another drink or another drug and always another man. She has a job in the music industry and is the wild-child of the group.
Amy is beautiful and charming and finds a rich husband and appears to have a perfect life...but can she share her problems with that life with her friends?
Emily is a single mother who was the smart one in college. She is raising her son by herself and refuses to tell her friends who her son's father is.

This is a fantastic book about a long term friendship between women that deals with real world problems - abuse, addiction, infidelity. The main characters are well written - not too perfect with flaws that make them more realistic. The bonds of their friendship get tested over and over as their secrets are revealed and the reader is anxious to find out if they are all able to maintain their friendships or if the secrets they are keeping will end it.

Thanks to the publisher for a copy of this book to read and review. All opinions are my own. show less