Best Friends Forever: A Novel

Another great read by Jennifer Weiner. Best Friends Forever has ups and downs, just like life does. A lot of smiles and a lot of O M G moments. I enjoyed this read and so will you.

Addie Downs and Valerie Adler have been best friends forever--or at least since they were 9 years old and Val moved across the street from Addie. They came from very different backgrounds--Addie from a warm, supportive family with a gifted older brother, and Val, the only child of a wild, promiscuous mother, who was anything but the ideal parent. But through it all the girls remained close until they got to high school and then everything changed. Val, who'd had her teeth straightened and gotten attractive became a member of the cheerleading squad and was popular, while poor Addie couldn't stop eating and became fatter and fatter. Then tragedy struck as Addie's brother was injured in a car crash and permanently brain-damaged, and Addie betrays her best friend. How? Thinking she's doing the right thing and protecting her friend, she tells what happened when Val went in the woods with the school's most popular boy. Val denies it, of course, and Addie is ostrasized and becomes the school's scapegoat, ridiculed and despised. Fifteen years later Val is on TV as a popular weather-person and Addie,who is no longer fat, is living at home, looking out for her brother, and making a comfoftable living drawing illustrations for a greeting card company. Then one night the doorbell rings and Val is standing there, with blood on her clothes and a terrifield look in her eyes. She says she's in deep trouble and begs Addie to help her. So Addie lets her in--after all, what are friends for?-- and what follows is a hilarious romp as the two friends try to outwit the law and the attractive chief-of-police in their small town. Along the way Addie, who is yearning for love and motherhood, finds it in the least expected places and her frienship with Val continues. A sweet story about loyalty and the ties that bind.

Addie and Val had been best friends since Val moved across the street from Addie when they were young. They were inseparable even though they were opposites. Then one night in High School something happened to Val that caused the two to go their own separate ways. 10 years after they graduate Val is a weather girl on the news and goes to her high school reunion and runs into Dan who made her life miserable. Something happens that forces her to go to the one person that she knows will help her. Addie had never really been thin, but became considerably bigger during and after high school. Then about a year before the reunion Addie decided to loose the weight. She started swimming and while loosing the weight met an older married man and began an affair with him. Addie is shocked when Val comes to her door asking for help, but decides to help Val over the next couple of weeks. During this time they both learn something about friendship and love as a detective tries to find out what happened at the reunion Val went to ends up falling for Addie. All in all a very good book.

Jennifer Weiner can be my BFF. I was disappointed in her previous book, Certain Girls, but with this novel, she demonstrates her brilliant ability to depict the agony and submission of the unpopular girl. She draws a well-defined demarcation between Valerie Adler, the thin, energized cheerleader who was the best friend of unpopular Addie Downs, who is ridiculed for her weight and becomes a target of the meanest high school cliques. Addie, similar to her previous heroines, is an intelligent girl who is also a caretaker. Her growing weight problem becomes parallel to her tragic family circumstances. Addie's father is a Viet Nam vet who could not exist in the mainstream, her mother is also overweight but a gentle soul who loves her children, Jon the popular athlete who suffers from a life changing accident and our heroine, Addie who takes care of everyone but herself. Addie desperately wants to belong and Val is her best friend, against all odds. Devastated by Valerie's overt disloyalty resulting from a high school sexual incident, Addie loses her best friend and any hope of a rewarding existence. Fast forward a few years later, Val re-enters Addie's life when she needs her help and the two women cross a threshold into a watered-down Thelma and Louise caper. Fueled with humor and recriminations, the plot unfolds into a clever, hilarious story which spotlight social stratum and expert characterizations. There is one tiny mistake in the book. Val is a television meteorologist in Chicago. At one point, Val is chiding Addie for not watching her on the 11:00 PM news. The news in Chicago comes on at 10:00 PM. Weiner is from the East coast so I forgive her this one teeny error.

When Addie and Valerie became neighbors as children, Addie was certain they would remain BFFs forever. However a negative high school incident left Addie (the overweight and loyal friend) hurt--and tore the two into two directions where they remained until, 15 years later, Valerie (high school cheerleader, now weather girl) entered Addie's life again...and with blood on her sleeve and in need of help. Best Friends Forever is a story of suspense, friendship, adventure and secrets and is told via 1st person and 3rd person from two different characters and also weaves tales of the past into the present via flashbacks. Where these elements could be awkward if not done well, it actually not only flows perfectly, but adds great interest for the reader. In spite of having read several great books recently I hadn't realized that the range of emotion (humor, suspense, love, tears, revenge...) within "Best Friends Forever" was just what I needed til I read it. The character development is so deep that I felt certain the author must "know" pieces of these characters somehow in real life or experienced some of what she described within her own--Great depths to their personalities and interactions. You truly read into their souls and she captures details in her words that make for deep insight. I also felt I was taken from childhood to adulthood in great detail (some will feel as though they are right back in highschool with her descriptions. ) and I both cried and laughed...it's actually a very deep story and nothing felt forced or contrived to me. You'll want to go through the adventure of Addie and Val so much that you may need to grab your booklight for this one...I found it to be a true "page turner". I felt empathy for Addie's struggles and adored Jordan and was captured by a roller coaster of emotions for Valerie. And...I'm typically not a person you can surprise with a twist at the end of a book; I always see it coming it seems. But this one was a surprise. To wrap up a tale and include such a range of emotion...suspense, heartbreak, humor, romance, and surprise all intertwined made for a truly great summer read. Afterall, what more is left?! Conclusion: excellent read...includes great characters, descriptions, adventure and a range of emotions spliced with some humor. A+

I finished the novel last night and really enjoyed it. Jen Weiner has such a lot of range. She can go from poignant to laugh-out-loud in just a few sentences. The novel is about a friendship that goes sour and then is resurrected and often has a madcap, Thelma and Louise-feel, especially when the two friends are "on the lam." Weiner fleshes out minor characters --her self-assured brother who meets with tragedy is particularly memorable--and keeps the pacing brisk, serving up a bit of a twist at the end. My favorite part of the novel was the flashbacks to the girls' childhoods. Jen brilliantly captures what it feels like to be ten and to have a very best friend with whom you share everything.