Normally I love Jane Green, so it's somewhat of a surprise to me that I found The Friends We Keep to be a letdown. Evvie, Maggie, and Topher meet during their freshman year in college and instantly become best friends. When they graduate, they vow to remain close friends, but real life slowly intrudes and they lose touch. Thirty years later, they meet up again and have another chance at closeness, but a dark secret from the past threatens to tear everything apart.
The story isn't bad per se, but it isn't compelling either. I found most of it to be boring and plodding. The early years when the three friends first meet isn't that interesting, and neither is the intervening years as they live their lives. The only riveting parts of the story are those related to the dark secret, but that's very little of the book. Otherwise, it feels like the story is padded to fill an entire book's worth of pages.
Reading this, I felt very little of any emotion or attachment. The words are on the page, and there should be characters I care about, but I just don't. The writing and the plot felt uninspired and tired. If you were looking to try out Jane Green, I think this one is entirely skippable and I would pick a different one to start with.
Readaroo Rating: 3 stars
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