My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Many Thanks to Net Galley, Thomas and Mercer and the author for a chance to read and review this book. All opinions are expressed voluntarily.

#TheBestOfFriends#NetGalley

An absolutely absorbing, emotional and gut-wrenching story of friendship and jealousy and human psyche, The Best Of Friends by Lucinda Berry has two pairs of friendship that is being explored. Dani, Lindsay and Kendra have been friends from elementary school, have continued to live close together, marry and have children and luckily for them, their eldest 3 sons, Caleb, Jacob and Sawyer also share the same deep abiding friendship.

Football heroes, they tend to party hard and a night of gaming sleepover ends with a gun fired twice, one of them dead, another with a traumatic brain injury and the third going mute suffering from the shock of it all. The aftermath of this incident drive forth the cracks in the lives of the 3 women as truths begin to emerge out of hidden crevices. Marital abuse, emotional affair, drinks and drugs, heart-breaking grief, motherhood; so much gets discussed as the reader is taken on an emotional journey thru’ the POV’s of Kendra, Lindsay and Dani.

The author has the exemplary ability in providing the different facets of human life and bringing to the focus that no one is perfect and that there are secrets hidden in each individual that no matter how much one believes in knowing the other, there could still be things that you may never know. The 3 women, their husbands, all the children, even Detective Locke; is fleshed out so well that all these characters become real in a reader’s mind. The scenes in the hospital, the unbearable torment as a mother, the subtle abuse being borne, there’s no 2 ways about it, this book does make your heart bleed.

The Best Of Friends is definitely not a pulse pounding thriller; but the final twist in the tale left me open-mouthed, WOW, never expected a whiff of that anywhere in the book.

Poignant!

This review is published in my blog, https://rainnbooks.wordpress.com/; Amazon India, Goodreads and Twitter.

An unthinkable tragedy forever changes a group of teens and turns family against family in this edge-of-your-seat thriller that begs to be read in one sitting.

Best friends Lindsey, Kendra, and Dani endure every parent’s nightmare when a tragic accident befalls their teenage boys, leaving one dead, another in a coma, and a third too traumatized to speak.

Reeling from the worst night of their lives, the three mothers plunge into a desperate investigation of the bizarre incident. How could something so horrible happen in their wealthy Southern California suburb?

They soon discover that the accident was just the beginning, and troubling discoveries lead to chilling questions: Do they really know their children? Do they even know each other? As more secrets surface, a fog of doubt and suspicion threatens to poison their families, their friendships, and the whole community.

With the illusion of happiness and safety long gone, these women must now confront the hazards of heartbreak, the consequences of jealousy, and the dangers of living double lives.