Review: Reasons for Avoiding Friends

  Reasons for Avoiding Friends by Megan Leavell
My rating: 4 of 5 stars 4 1/2 Stars

I didn't seem to have many of the issues with this book as others did. Perhaps it is because of my age so my mindset is quite a lot like the characters. Especially with Gwen. I am a lot like her but without the children. Yes, I have body issues. And yes, quite recently I have reconnected with a childhood friend of mine.

This book was slow to get off of the ground and sometimes I felt it dealt a tad too much with Gwen's problems while Iris was just avoiding her problems. However, I liked it like that. Too many times we get the glamourous second/third wife's perspective and forget about the 'frumpy housewife'. This book showed us that Gwen's problems were just as important as anyone else's.

I liked the slow build and the final true reconnection. I also found a lot of comedic/ironic areas in this book that some people may have missed.

I recommend this book especially to those who have taken a different path in life and have become a housewife, and to those who have a career but may be somewhat older than the norm for books of this type. Geez, I hope that made as much sense to you reading this, as it did in my head!

*ARC provided by the publisher Cedar House Press, the author Megan Leavell, and NetGalley.

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Description

"Growing up, Gwen and Iris were the best of friends, even if they couldn’t have been more different. Now Gwen is living her hometown dream, or so she reminds herself while juggling endless parenting drama, an unemployed husband, and a neighborhood pyramid scheme. Never mind that at age thirty-nine, her social circle still resembles middle school. Her life is everything she ever wanted it to be, but nothing like she had planned.

Iris was never destined for the ordinary. When she moved to Manhattan, she shed her old life for a better one—but not without a cost. From a distance, Iris’s life couldn’t be more charmed, but no one knows about the cracks in the image she’s worked so hard to cultivate. No one knows the real Iris at all. Except for Gwen. But Iris and Gwen haven’t spoken for years. Until…

When Iris’s past catches up with her, she turns to the one person she could always count on—but she isn’t the only one keeping secrets, and as Gwen scrambles to preserve an illusion of domestic bliss, she finds herself wondering when they went from telling each other everything to sharing nothing. Now, a little wiser, and most certainly a little older, Gwen and Iris discover that the truest of friends accept you just as you are, and that loving yourself is sometimes the best way to find happiness."