BEST FRIENDS FOREVER

Author: Jennifer Weiner ISBN: 9780743294294 7/2009 FICTION Publisher: SIMON & SCHUSTER

Some bonds can never be broken... Addie Downs and Valerie Adler will be best friends forever. That's what Addie believes after Valerie moves across the street when they're both nine years old. But in the wake of betrayal during their teenage years, Val is swept into the popular crowd, while mousy, sullen Addie becomes her school's scapegoat. Flash-forward fifteen years. Valerie Adler has found a measure of fame and fortune working as the weathergirl at the local TV station. Addie Downs lives alone in her parents' house in their small hometown of La Prairie, Illinois, caring for a troubled brother and trying to meet Prince Charming on the Internet. She's just returned from Bad Date #6, when she opens her door to find her long-gone best friend standing there, with a terrified look on her face and blood on the sleeve of her coat. "Something horrible has happened," Val tells Addie...

RRAH's THOUGHTS AND PONDERINGS:

BEST FRIENDS FOREVER is a little bit…strange. Jennifer Weiner is such a good wordsmith that it took me quite a while to notice it with my sick baby-dazed brain, but as I progressed though the novel, I realized all the characters were nut jobs no matter how empathetic one wanted to be with their past troubles, and things just weren’t resolving in any rational fashion. Maybe the point was that like finds like and even crazy people can find friendship and love? Dunno… I sincerely hope that the average set of best friends turned enemies aren’t supposed to have friendship rekindled by near manslaughter and life on the run complete with bank robberies and the like. I mean, come on.

Still, if you like the occasional well-written crazy people novel, dig in!

Heather Hiestand