The Friends We Keep
As seen on The Today Show!
The Friends We Keep is the heartwarming and unforgettable New York Times bestselling novel from Jane Green, author of Sister Stardust and The Beach House.
Evvie, Maggie, and Topher have known one another since college. Their friendship was something they swore would last forever. Now years have passed, the friends have drifted apart, and they never found the lives they wanted--the lives they dreamed of when they were young and everything seemed possible.
Evvie starved herself to become a supermodel but derailed her career by sleeping with a married man.
Maggie married Ben, the boy she fell in love with in college, never imagining the heartbreak his drinking would cause.
Topher became a successful actor, but the shame of a childhood secret shut him off from real intimacy.
By their thirtieth reunion, these old friends have lost touch with one another and with the people they dreamed of becoming. Together again, they have a second chance at happiness...until a dark secret is revealed that changes everything.
The Friends We Keep is about how despite disappointments we've had or mistakes we've made, it's never too late to find a place to call home.
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Community Reviews
Bestselling author Jane Green returns with an ambitious saga about three friends who meet in college, the far-reaching directions their lives take them, and how they come back together years later.
Evvie, Maggie, and Topher were devoted to each other during college and convinced that they would always be friends. But as often happens, once they graduated, and embarked upon careers and relationships, they drifted apart. Green details what happens to each of the three friends.
Evvie learned in college to use medications to stay thin and attractive, and parlayed that knowledge into a highly successful career as a model. However, beauty fades and so did Evvie’s career as she allowed emotional eating to take over. She had a brief, but momentous affair with a married man and bore his son. A son that she has steadfastly kept away from Maggie and Topher.
Maggie had a crush on Ben when they were in college. In fact, they called him “Evil Ben” because he was a grumpy bartender in the same local pub where Evvie worked. Even back in college, Ben’s drinking was problematic. A chance meeting several years after graduation brought Maggie and Ben back together and they married, intending to start a family. Through Maggie, Green illustrates that life doesn’t always work out according to plan, especially when one is either too naive or chooses not to appreciate the significance of obstacles that present themselves.
In college, Topher thought he was just not a sexual being. He didn’t like to be touched by anyone, male or female. After college he pursued and enjoyed a career as an actor, scoring a steady gig on a popular daytime drama. And he discovered his sexual orientation and found love within a committed, if not passionate, relationship, as well as from supportive friends. After the death of his beloved partner, Topher enjoys a platonic relationship with an older gentleman and moves in with him. An inadvertent but irresponsible lapse in judgment derails his career and tarnishes his reputation, so he is eventually forced to confront the horror he endured as a child. That trauma explains fully why true emotional intimacy has always evaded him.
The three friends are reunited at their thirtieth college reunion, and they realize how deeply they all still care about each other. They fall right back into their old patterns — laughing, talking, drinking. Each of them has reached a crossroads in his/her life, and they realize that they not only like each other. They also need each other. Maggie has the perfect solution! And all is again well, despite the fact that Evvie has been keeping an explosive secret that, if revealed, will destroy the relationship that she has re-established with Maggie and Topher.
In true Green fashion, that secret has far-reaching ramifications for her three characters. She capably explores its impact upon each of them as they grapple with information that changes the basic facts they have assumed about each other. Green focuses on themes including taking responsibility for one’s own actions and choices; the consequences of an inability to appreciate the gravity of evidence of trouble; forgiveness; and what it means to be a family. Through her three characters, she also examines how destructive disappointment can be and the importance of being able to move past it in order to find a new, if not predicted or foreseen, normal.
The fact that the ending of The Friends We Keep is thoroughly predictable does not detract from the enjoyment of sharing the journeys of Green’s three characters. Each of them is highly flawed, but so thoroughly human that they are empathetic and likable in spite of their shortcomings. Each of them makes terrible choices and is required to confront the fall-out from their own behavior. Green never lets the book’s pace drag as she deftly navigates between the perspectives of each character over the course of more than three decades.
The Friends We Keep is engrossing and her characters are endearing. It’s precisely the kind of book to throw in one’s beach bag and enjoy while lounging by a pool or on the shore.
Thanks to NetGalley for an Advance Reader's Copy of the book.
Evvie, Maggie, and Topher were devoted to each other during college and convinced that they would always be friends. But as often happens, once they graduated, and embarked upon careers and relationships, they drifted apart. Green details what happens to each of the three friends.
Evvie learned in college to use medications to stay thin and attractive, and parlayed that knowledge into a highly successful career as a model. However, beauty fades and so did Evvie’s career as she allowed emotional eating to take over. She had a brief, but momentous affair with a married man and bore his son. A son that she has steadfastly kept away from Maggie and Topher.
Maggie had a crush on Ben when they were in college. In fact, they called him “Evil Ben” because he was a grumpy bartender in the same local pub where Evvie worked. Even back in college, Ben’s drinking was problematic. A chance meeting several years after graduation brought Maggie and Ben back together and they married, intending to start a family. Through Maggie, Green illustrates that life doesn’t always work out according to plan, especially when one is either too naive or chooses not to appreciate the significance of obstacles that present themselves.
In college, Topher thought he was just not a sexual being. He didn’t like to be touched by anyone, male or female. After college he pursued and enjoyed a career as an actor, scoring a steady gig on a popular daytime drama. And he discovered his sexual orientation and found love within a committed, if not passionate, relationship, as well as from supportive friends. After the death of his beloved partner, Topher enjoys a platonic relationship with an older gentleman and moves in with him. An inadvertent but irresponsible lapse in judgment derails his career and tarnishes his reputation, so he is eventually forced to confront the horror he endured as a child. That trauma explains fully why true emotional intimacy has always evaded him.
The three friends are reunited at their thirtieth college reunion, and they realize how deeply they all still care about each other. They fall right back into their old patterns — laughing, talking, drinking. Each of them has reached a crossroads in his/her life, and they realize that they not only like each other. They also need each other. Maggie has the perfect solution! And all is again well, despite the fact that Evvie has been keeping an explosive secret that, if revealed, will destroy the relationship that she has re-established with Maggie and Topher.
In true Green fashion, that secret has far-reaching ramifications for her three characters. She capably explores its impact upon each of them as they grapple with information that changes the basic facts they have assumed about each other. Green focuses on themes including taking responsibility for one’s own actions and choices; the consequences of an inability to appreciate the gravity of evidence of trouble; forgiveness; and what it means to be a family. Through her three characters, she also examines how destructive disappointment can be and the importance of being able to move past it in order to find a new, if not predicted or foreseen, normal.
The fact that the ending of The Friends We Keep is thoroughly predictable does not detract from the enjoyment of sharing the journeys of Green’s three characters. Each of them is highly flawed, but so thoroughly human that they are empathetic and likable in spite of their shortcomings. Each of them makes terrible choices and is required to confront the fall-out from their own behavior. Green never lets the book’s pace drag as she deftly navigates between the perspectives of each character over the course of more than three decades.
The Friends We Keep is engrossing and her characters are endearing. It’s precisely the kind of book to throw in one’s beach bag and enjoy while lounging by a pool or on the shore.
Thanks to NetGalley for an Advance Reader's Copy of the book.
This grew on me. It follows the lives of three university friends from when they meet at a UK university in the 1980s through to the current day (2019). To begin with, I found the characters rather shallow and stereotypical, and the plot only mildly amusing - a cliche storyline of girl-can’t-stand-boy-but-you-know-they'll-end-up-together. As I was listening to the audiobook, I also had to grin and bear it through the author/narrators’ slightly dodgy regional and international accents (almost every character had a different one, which was a little over-kill). I strongly disliked Evvie and many of her life choices. I would not ever want her as my best friend. The other two main characters ("mother-hen" Maggie and "gay-actor" Topher) were perfectly amiable. Having said all this, I did enjoy the trip down memory lane to my own UK university days with all their tales of life in halls as freshers and later living off campus in rented student accommodation. Furthermore, the author then surprised me halfway through the book as she really began to develop the plot and characters in a much more deep and moving way. We end up following three very strong personalities whose lives end up going in very different directions. I thought that Jane Green does a really good job with the later story progression and bringing things together in the final few chapters. The story ends up providing plenty of drama, humour, tragedy, and heart-wrenching moments. The audiobook just needed to dial back on the accents...
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