Friends Like Us

October 31, 2011
Fox’s funny and bittersweet new novel tackles the fragility of friendship. In high school, heroine Willa was best friends with Ben, but the two drifted apart after their freshman year of college. The adult Willa is now best friends and roommates with Jane, who is like her in every way. After Ben and Willa reconnect at a high school reunion, he confesses that he was in love with her when they were teenagers. Though they fail to begin a romance, they do resume their friendship. But when Ben meets Jane and they start dating, a love triangle forms, with Willa serving as the essential, but confused third wheel. As Ben and Jane’s relationship becomes more serious, the attraction between Ben and Willa grows, and all three must cope with the consequences. Instead of making Willa’s story maudlin and clichéd, Fox (Still Life with Husband) steers her characters toward a surprisingly realistic and complex conclusion. A thoughtful, delicate book.

December 15, 2011
A young woman who introduces her best friend to her formerly nerdy high-school companion has mixed feelings about the situation when the two begin a romantic relationship. Drifting in a way typical to recent college graduates, aspiring illustrator Willa takes considerable comfort in the fact that her roommate Jane is in the same boat. Sharing a dingy Milwaukee apartment, the girls are closer than sisters and have similar lanky, curly-haired good looks. Jane, who works as a housecleaner but writes poetry on the side, is, in Willa's mind, a sunnier and more confident version of herself. Their cozy twosome is altered forever, though, with the arrival of Ben. Willa and Ben were inseparable in high school, and after a seven-year separation meet again at a reunion, where Ben confesses to a longtime crush on her. Willa senses Ben's appeal, but after an awkward first kiss relegates him to the "friend" role. And soon after Ben meets Jane. Willa, happy to see her two favorite people in love, initially blesses their union, and they become a happy trio, doing everything together. Willa also takes an easy job in a flower shop and dates a slippery Irishman named Declan, but Ben and Jane remain the center of her world. But when Ben asks Jane to marry him, Willa panics, worrying that life is going forward without her. Jealous of what Jane has, and still hurting over past events (such as the demise of her parent's marriage), Willa makes an irreversible decision guaranteed to have painful repercussions for everyone involved. In spite of the novel's predictable scenario, Fox (Still Life with Husband, 2007) has a talent for language and her wounded, witty Willa is a remarkably complex creation. Moving, artfully written Gen-Y roman à clef.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

November 1, 2011

Fox's latest novel (after Still Life with Husband) is an honest look into the friendships and relationships we develop in early adulthood and how circumstances and bad choices often alter them. Roommates Willa and Jane are such best friends that they seemingly intuit each other's thoughts. How well they really know each other is challenged when Willa's best friend from high school, Ben, comes back into the picture and falls in love with Jane. What starts as a happy trio of friends soon becomes weighted with jealousies and insecurities. Willa wishes she had her old Ben back and sometimes feels like the third wheel. Things become tenser with a proposal and an imminent wedding date. Fox explores how our happiness can be fleeting and how what we think we want and need may not be so important after all. VERDICT Fox's realistic take on the growing pains of young adulthood grips the reader to the final page. Anyone who has suffered the loss of a friendship will embrace this thoughtful novel.--Anne M. Miskewitch, Chicago P.L.

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from December 1, 2011
Willa and Jane have been inseparable since they met in a college writing class. They complement each other perfectly: Jane's neatness and Willa's clutter, Jane's writing and Willa's art. When Jane starts dating Willa's high-school best friend, the two become a happy trio in the girls' shabby Milwaukee apartment. We know from the prologue how things end, but readers will delight in watching the triangle try to find its shape. Willa believes that everyone in her life will fail her and that losing people is par for the course; her bitterly divorced parents and her bullying older brother have set fine examples. But Fox does not simply justify Willa's resignation. She creates a character whose social awkwardness and desperation are charming. How can a reader not sympathize with a girl who can bemoan her third-wheel status with a reference to The Glass Menagerie? The relationships are realistically depicted, especially among the three friends, whose inside jokes become like a second language. The plot is pure Emily Giffin, but Fox tackles quarter-life angst with the honesty of Ann Packer's The Dive from Clausen's Pier (2002). The hard emotional truths go down easily amid the smart, rapid-fire wit. A pure if heartbreaking pleasure.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)