by J Courtney Sullivan
I really really struggle to read this book. I started to read it weeks ago but I’ve ended up putting it on the back burner. The story is so slow and to be totally honest very boring, so much so I really don’t think I will finish the book. I don’t like to give up on books but I’m afraid that is what I am going to do with this book. The synopsis for the book sounds really good, which you can see below. But for me it just didn’t live up to my expectations and I didn’t find it hilarious like other reviewers have.
Synopsis: An insightful, hilarious, and compulsively readable novel about a complicated friendship between two women who are at two very different stages in life, from the best-selling author of Maine and Saints for All Occasions (named one of the Washington Post’s Ten Best Books of the Year and a New York Times Critics’ Pick).
Elisabeth, an accomplished journalist and new mother, is struggling to adjust to life in a small town after nearly twenty years in New York City. Alone in the house with her infant son all day (and awake with him much of the night), she feels uneasy, adrift. She neglects her work, losing untold hours to her Brooklyn moms’ Facebook group, her “influencer” sister’s Instagram feed, and text messages with the best friend she never sees anymore.
Enter Sam, a senior at the local women’s college, whom Elisabeth hires to babysit. Sam is struggling to decide between the path she’s always planned on and a romantic entanglement that threatens her ambition. She’s worried about student loan debt and what the future holds. In short order, they grow close. But when Sam finds an unlikely kindred spirit in Elisabeth’s father-in-law, the true differences between the women’s lives become starkly revealed and a betrayal has devastating consequences.
A masterful exploration of motherhood, power dynamics, and privilege in its many forms, Friends and Strangers reveals how a single year can shape the course of a life.
Pages: 416, Publication Date: 27 April 2021, My Rating: 
Gadget Girl 71 
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