Overview
Today Show ReadwithJenna Book Club Pick
Washington Post "Book to Read this Summer"
Real Simple "Best Book of 2020" and "Top Pick for Summer"
Entertainment Weekly "Book to Read this June"
Parade "Best Book of the Summer" and "Best Beach Read of 2020"
TheSkimm "Hottest Book of the Summer"
Vogue "Book to Read this June"
People magazine "Best Book to Read this Summer"
Good Housekeeping "Best Beach Read"
Marie Claire "Best New Book to Read this Summer"
Bustle "Most Anticipated Book of 2020"
SheReads "Most Anticipated Book of 2020"
Travel and Leisure "Most Anticipated Book of the Summer"
Good Morning America "Book to Read This Summer"
Town and Country "Must-Read Book of the Summer"
New York Times "Book to Watch For"
CNN "Perfect Summer Read"
An insightful, hilarious, and compulsively readable novel about a complicated friendship between two women who are at two very different stages in life, from the best-selling author of Maine and Saints for All Occasions (named one of the Washington Post's Ten Best Books of the Year and a New York Times Critics' Pick).
Elisabeth, an accomplished journalist and new mother, is struggling to adjust to life in a small town after nearly 20 years in New York City. Alone in the house with her infant son all day (and awake with him much of the night), she feels uneasy, adrift. She neglects her work, losing hours to her Brooklyn moms' FB group, her "influencer" sister's IG feed, and text messages with the best friend she never sees. Enter Sam, a senior at the local women's college, whom Elisabeth hires to babysit. Sam is struggling to decide between the path she's always planned on and a romantic entanglement that threatens her ambition. She's worried about student loan debt and what the future holds. In short order, they grow close. But when Sam finds an unlikely kindred spirit in Elisabeth's father-in-law, the true differences between their lives become starkly revealed and a betrayal has consequences.
A masterful exploration of motherhood, power dynamics, and privilege in its many forms, Friends and Strangers reveals how a single year can shape the course of a life.
