Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I’m going to use this day to think about what this holiday stands for, and use the day off to catch up on my reading and just spend time with my dogs without really spending it with people I don’t really like. I think I did that once before, so I’m not gonna do that again. Anyway, thank you so much to Rachel for including me in this blog tour, and seriously I feel like I would read almost anything for Rachel and her blog tour company. Click on the banner for the tour schedule, as usual.

Friendship should always come first.

There’s only one way out from rock bottom and that’s up, and Teri Meyer is finally crawling out from the worst time of her life – no thanks to her best friend Lee. But no matter, she’s finally found love – real love with a real man, a successful man, a man who accepts all her flaws. Teri’s never felt like this before, and yet it’s changing her in ways she doesn’t understand.

And there’s only one person who can help, one person who truly understands Teri.

It seems that no matter how hard Lee Harper tries, there’s a battle awaiting her at every turn these days, and she’s tired. And as if she needs the extra stress, Teri continues to create constant and unnecessary drama. But Lee’s the only one who really knows what’s going on under Teri’s hard, convoluted exterior, and that’s why she’s always been there for her.

But the question is: will Teri be there when Lee needs her most?

The brilliant and entertaining final book in the unique FRIENDS trilogy dishes out another dose of rib-tickling mayhem for our favourite thirty-something professional women.

Website | Sue’s Twitter | Susan’s Twitter

Sue Featherstone and Susan Pape are both former newspaper journalists with extensive experience of working for national and regional papers and magazines, and in public relations.

More recently they have worked in higher education, teaching journalism – Sue at Sheffield Hallam and Susan at Leeds Trinity University.

The pair, who have been friends for twenty-five years, wrote two successful journalism text books together – Newspaper Journalism: A Practical Introduction and Feature Writing: A Practical Introduction (both published by Sage).

Sue, who is married with two grown-up daughters, loves reading, writing and Nordic walking in the beautiful countryside near her Yorkshire home.

Susan is married and lives in a village near Leeds, and, when not writing, loves walking and cycling in the Yorkshire Dales. She is also a member of a local ukulele orchestra.

Disclaimer: I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own. Thank you to Rachel’s Random Resources and Lakewater Press for this free copy. All quotes in this review are taken from the Advanced Reader Copy and may change in final publication.

Discussion of abortion, sex scenes, parent death

I feel like I am not prepared to have any adult friendships after reading books like this and Firefly Lane because they just sound like they are full of heartache and emotions that I’m not prepared for. Reading the synopsis for this one was intense really, and I feel like it was a situation that I personally would not want to be in, nor would I be completely prepared for. How do you really forgive a friend after everything that happened? Could you even ask to be forgiven if you were in the wrong?

So like many of the other reviewers mentioned, this book is actually the third and final book in the Friends trilogy, but luckily can be read as a standalone. So it worked out for me because I didn’t read the first two books yet. And honestly, I’m glad when books that are part of a trilogy or a series can be read separately and still be understood. But I may – one day in the future – try the other two books to see the friendship between Teri and Lee develop into what it was in this book.

From what I read though, it’s so hard to maintain adult friendships for years when the boundaries are not set, or they have been blurred for years without any sort of discussion and understanding between the two parties. I feel like that’s what happened in this situation, and why Lee didn’t want to deal with Teri and her drama all the time. Sometimes people just have the need to have something go wrong in order to give some sort of… excitement or something to their life, and they have to tell those that know them so that they can share that feeling. But the more that people do that to others, the more it causes undue emotional drain and stress on those that have to listen to it. It’s really not fair, and I can understand why there was distance between the two, even though they were friends for so long.

Sometimes it’s just better to let certain people go for certain periods of time.

I think this got pretty emotional during parts of the time and definitely make sure that you are in the right mindset to deal with the repercussions of it. While it may not be a conventional friendship and maybe it’s a little out there as far as the plot – for “normal” women’s fiction friendship plots, whatever that is – but I think this was a very interesting story and finale to what must have been a dramatic trilogy.

I feel kind of numb after writing this and that’s really because I didn’t realize that I was going to end up watching The Body…. the Buffy episode where everyone is trying to process Joyce’s death. I didn’t know I got that far in the series again, and wow. Very emotional.

But anyway, I hope you all have an amazing day, fam and stay tuned for a couple of more reviews today.