Friends Like Us

Book on CD performed by Amy Rubinate


From the book jacket: For Willa Jacobs, seeing her best friend, Jane Weston, is like looking in a mirror on a really good day. Strangers assume they are sisters, a comparison Willa secretly enjoys. They share an apartment, clothing, and groceries, eking out rent with part-time jobs. Willa writes advertising copy, dreaming up inspirational messages for tea bags, while Jane cleans houses and writes poetry about it, rhyming “clog of hair” with “fog of despair.” Together Willa and Jane are a fortress of private jokes and shared opinions, with a friendship so close there’s hardly room for anyone else. But when Ben, Willa’s oldest friend, reappears and falls in love with Jane, Willa wonders: show more Can she let her two best friends find happiness with each other if it means leaving her behind?

My reactions
I really enjoyed this exploration of friendship and the choices one makes as one matures. I remember close friends I had in my twenties … how we’d hang out at each other’s apartments, sometimes spending the night, watching movies, sharing PB sandwiches, taking a walk to the park or a Saturday matinee. And, like the characters in Fox’s novel, we’d create terrible puns and inside jokes that, looking back, were truly dreadful, but which made us feel clever and bright and “in charge of our destiny.”

While I’ve never experienced the kind of implosion that this trio is headed for, I have witnessed (and been part of) break-ups that hurt so badly you wondered how you would ever survive. And I recognized how a best friend can say just the right thing to help you through what you believe to be the darkest moments. So the relationships between these people and their emotions were completely relatable to me, even though I am more than twice as old as they are.

Willa narrates, and so we get more of her internal dialogue and exploration of her feelings about what is happening between her and Ben and Jane. I would have liked to have heard more from both Jane and Ben’s perspectives.

I loved all the references to local establishments. I don’t often read books set in Milwaukee, and the setting contributed to my easily relating to the book’s characters and plot. There’s also a very interesting subplot involving Willa’s brother, Seth.

Amy Rubinate does a fine job performing the audiobook version. There are many scenes where the two women have quick back and forth banter and I was never confused about who was speaking. show less

Fun. Sad. Funny. At heart, the story of Willa, her best friend/roommate Jane, and her old friend Ben. A triangle ensues. But also the story of Willa's family, finding yourself, trying to figure out what "love" is, and so much more. It really rings true, and while heartbreaking, is liberally sprinkled with humor. Interesting, "normal" mixed up characters.

I keep picking up books about friends. This one I found both enjoyable and frustrating. I liked the characters, I liked the characters enough that I wanted to give them the V-8 smack when they did things to screw up their friendships. And the ending, oh the ending, too many loose ends, no closure, too much like real life.

Friends Like Us may be marketed as your typical chick-lit novel, but it is so much more than that. Fox realistically portrays the friendship between two young twenty-something: Willa, a writer struggling to get by writing advertising copy for tea and mascara, and Jane, a poet who finds inspiration while cleaning houses. Willa, the novel’s narrator, believes that their friendship can withstand anything until Ben, Willa’s nerdy best friend from high school and Jane’s new boyfriend, gets in the middle. The story is both bittersweet and funny, and will keep readers guessing until the very end.

Laura H. / Marathon County Public Library

Find this book in our library catalog.

It was about five seconds between reading the sample on my Kindle and hitting "buy this book." I was so drawn in to the characters that all I wanted to do was hang out with them some more, as soon as possible. A fun yet bittersweet book that I'm already wanting to re-read it.

I'm really torn on 3 or 4 stars. It would be like 3.75 so I'm rounding up. I found this book very enjoyable and readable, liked the humour, but of course it wouldn't end well. And it didn't. So it was sad but still good.

I'm really torn on 3 or 4 stars. It would be like 3.75 so I'm rounding up. I found this book very enjoyable and readable, liked the humour, but of course it wouldn't end well. And it didn't. So it was sad but still good.