Friends and Strangers by J. Courtney Sullivan

Friends and Strangers Reviews

• 
  Yun

  In Friends and Strangers, we follow two women: Elizabeth as she moves from the city to the suburbs after having a baby, and her babysitter Sam, a student at the local university. Each is trying to figure out her own path. Elizabeth is adjusting to post-baby life while keeping a secret from her husband. And Sam is trying to balance college life with her much-older boyfriend while making post-graduation plans.
  
  This book started off with a bang for me. For the first 100 pages, I was riveted and couldn't put it down. I found Sullivan's writing to be clear-eyed and perceptive, her sketch of each women to be nuanced and insightful. It's a character-driven novel, so not much was happening in terms of action, but that didn't stop my enjoyment of it, at least initially.
  
  But then this book started to bother me. For one, it has one of my biggest pet peeves when it comes to tropes: all conflict comes from things unspoken. But the egregiousness of these unspoken things are not all the same. Some are actually good things (giving money, help with finding a job), while others are severe betrayals (fertility fraud, publishing grievances told in confidence), but the book treats them as if they are all on the same level. In each case, the receiver freaks out and refuses to try to understand the other side. It's all very exhausting, especially because some of the issues are quite petty.
  
  Every character in here is fairly selfish and obtuse, but no one more so than Elizabeth. Nothing she does makes any sense to me. She looks down on others while thinking she is above them. She tries to control others with money while refusing to let her father control her in the same way. She lies to her husband repeatedly, on two major issues. She obsesses over other people's problems while sticking her head in the sand and refusing to deal with her own.
  
  One thing in particular that made me uncomfortable is the way the book deals with the topic of having children. As someone who doesn't have kids, I found the way Elizabeth talks about new motherhood and the way she acts after having her child to be extremely off-putting. But then the book does a 180 at the very end, as if to indicate that a woman cannot be content unless she has as many kids as her husband wants? I honestly don't know.
  
  Another thing that really bothered me was how Elizabeth tried so hard to convince Sam's friend that embryo donation was wrong and that she will regret it for the rest of her life. Never mind that she was helping a couple that could not have kids on their own, and by first agreeing and then bowing out, she took away that chance for the couple. The book's lack of addressing this made it seem as if it agrees with that stance, and that's rather troubling.
  
  This book is also very heavy-handed in the topics it's exploring. There is a focus on privilege, that it exists in many different ways (not just rich versus poor). But that is spelled out for the reader many, many times. I was also surprised at how in-depth the book went into to talk about the corrupt system that is keeping the little guy down. The thing is, I agree with all that, but I just prefer books that make me think, not ones that do the thinking for me and then spoon-feed it to me.
  
  For me, a great character-driven book has to show character growth. (Otherwise, what I am reading for?) But that just didn't happen in this book. The two main characters remained exactly the same from beginning to end. Sam was extremely angry with Elizabeth for helping, without which she wouldn't have the life she has. But she seems not to realize this. And Elizabeth continues to lie to her husband without any consequences.
  
  In the end, I enjoyed Sullivan's writing, and I will continue to read it. But this time, I found too much that was troubling for me. And the parts that weren't, I didn't really grasp the point or mesh with the delivery. There was so much heavy-handedness in here, to the point where all the characters feel like caricatures of the points the author is trying to make, and it was just too much.
• 
  Paromjit

  J. Courtney Sullivan writes a slow paced human drama, an emotional, insightful and compassionate look at a new mother and her babysitter's relationship as she peels back the layers beyond the initial idolisation and friendship between employer and employee. Elizabeth, a recent transplant to a small town in upstate New York, a new mother with a much wanted IVF baby, is a writer leaving NYC with her husband, Andrew, for a more rural idyll with family close by in the form of Andrew's family. However, it turns out to be far from a dream location, Elizabeth is finding motherhood a fraught experience, there is the tedium, the constant getting up at night, and she is feeling a strong sense of disconnection, a deep loneliness she cannot assuage with the local women she is surrounded by as she mentally distances herself from them.
  
  Instead, Elizabeth is missing the life and people she has left behind in New York City, she spends her time on social media, including following her sister, and unable to tune into her normal ambition and struggling to get any writing done, her head a mess of confusion, she is laden with an inability to ground herself in her current realities. She hires Sam as a babysitter, who provides her with 'friendship', and is grateful for her connection with the baby. Sam is a student at the local college, trying to make ends meet, from a loving family with financial difficulties, working in the college cafeteria, where she feels more at home than with her fellow more privileged students, and has a London boyfriend. Sam wants to emulate Elizabeth, seeing her as the perfect role model, but it does not take long before the rose tinted glasses fall off and their relationship hits trouble as the issues that have been simmering below the surface break out in the open.
  
  Courtney Sullivan storytelling is sensitive and resonates, touching on issues like class divisions, perfectly capturing Elizabeth's blindness to her own privilege and the impact it made on her life despite being estranged from her family. What happens to her father-in-law, the career he has built up through the years going down the drain, illustrating the turbulent economic realities in the US, how much harder it is to survive where big companies treat their workers so poorly, with the constant chipping away of the middle class. This is a well written and engaging read, on family, motherhood, inequality, power, privilege, money and politics, social media, deception and secrets. Many thanks to John Murray Press for an ARC.
• 
  JanB

  4.5 stars
  Friendship is fraught with nuance. Some friendships are meant to last forever, and some for only a season.
  
  Elisabeth, a new mother, leaves her beloved NYC for a small town. She’s estranged from her wealthy family, and is lonely, adrift, and struggling to fit in. Sam is a college student hired by Elisabeth as her nanny. She comes from a very close-knit middle-class family, and is adrift in the rarefied world of wealth at an elite private university.
  
  Elisabeth and Sam strike up a friendship, one where Sam envies Elisabeth who seems to have it all together, while Elisabeth sees Sam as someone with a future that’s an unwritten script she can help write.
  
  Both, in different ways, think they know what is best for others. One is an idealist with a desire to enact change, and the other simply doesn’t mind meddling in others’ lives. You know what they say about the road to hell and good intentions….
  As well as what they say about assumptions...
  
  The dual perspectives of two women from very different times in their lives is very revealing. Can we ever truly know anyone? Can we ever truly escape our past? Isn’t everyone who is a friend also, in many ways, a stranger? As a reader, we are privy to their inner thoughts and secrets and by the end, I think there’s something relatable for most of us.
  
  Lest you think this is all seriousness with a capital S, if you are a fan of dysfunctional families, you are in for a treat with a Christmas dinner that makes the worst of our dysfunctional family get-togethers look like a Norman Rockwell scene. Maybe I have a twisted sense of humor but I found it hilarious.
  
  For likable characters, Elisabeth’s father-in-law was by far my favorite. He is kind and lovable and has a theory of the Hollow Tree – a societal system where everything looks good from the outside until you look deeper and discover the hollow underbelly and the people left behind without a safety net. A concept that has never been more evident than during the pandemic of 2020/21. “Once you see the hollow tree, you see it everywhere”. Amen.
  
  There are many relevant and thought-provoking themes that beg for discussion, which is exactly what my friend Marialyce and I did. This is on the short list of one of our most discussed books ever.
  
  If you are looking for a lighter, character-driven read with substance, I highly recommend! But be aware you won’t always like the characters or agree with their actions.
  
  If you read this book be sure to watch the interview with Jenna Bush Hager and the author on Instagram @readwithjenna. It’s interesting and enlightening as well as completely entertaining.
  
  For our duo review please visit:
  
  https://yayareadslotsofbooks.wordpres...
• 
  Brandice

  Friends and Strangers explores the relationship between Elizabeth, a new mom and writer, who has recently relocated from New York City to a small town with her husband, and Sam, an ambitious college senior who is planning for the next steps in her life. Elizabeth hires Sam to watch Gil, her baby, a few days week while she works on her next book.
  
  The story alternates between Sam and Elizabeth and over time, the two women grow close. I liked both of them and found different perspectives from each of them relatable. While they initially get along and find common ground, the contrasts in their lives and upbringings become apparent.
  
  ”She wondered if it was in her blood, her cells, her DNA, this inability to be satisfied with what she had.”
  
  I viewed Sam and Elizabeth as good people who seemed to want the best for others, however, as the story highlights, how we perceive ourselves and our lives is not the same as how others do — Not a new concept but certainly always an interesting one.
  
  J. Courtney Sullivan is one of my favorite authors and I always look forward to her next book — Friends and Strangers was no exception!
• 
  Taylor Reid

  J. Courtney Sullivan has a really great ability to detail the complexities of womanhood and family. And here she’s tackling young motherhood in a way that, as a parent of a toddler, felt viscerally real for me. But there’s a lot more going on here, too. If you liked Maine, or any of Sullivan’s novels, you’ll like this one, too.
• 
  Barbara

  I listened to “Friends and Strangers” by J. Courtney Sullivan, performed by Kate Rudd. I loved it. Rudd did a fantastic job, and the story is compelling to me as a mother and a past babysitter.
  
  In an interview with NPR, Sullivan said that she got the idea after she had a baby herself. She had been a babysitter for a woman when she was in college and grew close to the mother of the child she babysat for. For Sullivan it was a memorable relationship; yet the mother didn’t recall their relationship at all. Also, Sullivan worked in NYC in her twenties and thirties. When she was in her thirties, she found herself jealous of those who had family wealth to fall back on and supplemented by. She used those experiences as fodder for this novel.
  
  The two main characters are Elizabeth and Sam. Elizabeth is an author with two novels in publication and in the midst of writing her third novel. She just had a baby and needs time to write her novel. Sam is a rising Senior at a university. She’s from a working-class family and saddled with debt. Sam is hired by Elizabeth to watch her son as she writes her third novel, and the women develop a close relationship.
  
  Elizabeth sees Sam as a younger version of herself. As a result, she tries to “help” her with advice. Sam is idealistic and is an artist as well.
  
  Themes of the novel are social class, wealth, education, working mothers, and female relationships. And I love the title because it emphasizes that our friends are also strangers to us. Sam and Elizabeth think they know the other person and their situation. This novel is brilliant in showing how we misinterpret many issues of our friends. We all make judgements and assumptions about our friends, Yet, we don’t truly know what that person’s intentions, feelings and history are. Sullivan nails those issues.
  
  Sullivan also points out how all of us are works in progress. We all are growing, filtering, and changing. Sullivan told NPR that she saw the novel as a conversation with her younger self. That intimacy shows in this fantastic novel. This is realistic fiction with themes that will make the reader contemplate their own personal relationships. This novel illuminates our complex relationships.
• 
  Michelle

  DNF at 50%
  
  Unfortunately, I have to let this one go. The writing is good and I can relate to a lot regarding the perspective of being. A young mother, but it’s a lot of talking about issues and nothing is happening. I’m not really feeling connected or invested in any of the characters either.
  
  I was really looking forward to this too. I’ll definitely give her next book a try and encourage others to consider this one. I just know it isn’t for me at the moment.
  
  Thank you to Knopf Publishing and Edelweiss for the opportunity to read and provide an honest review.
  
  Review Date: 06/28/20
  Publication Date: 06/30/20
• 
  mimi (taylor’s version)

  REVIEW WITH SPOILER
  
  Friends and Strangers is a novel about those people you hang out with for a while until you don't anymore. People who you cherish and to who you tell your secrets.
  The fact is that in your life you'll meet a lot of these people until you realize you don't even think of them, nor you know who they became with time. Because they weren't your friends in the first place.
  
  J. Courtney Sullivan tells the story of mostly ugly people who do ugly things to one another.
  The main characters are Elizabeth and Sam: the first, a 38-year-old journalist and author, decides to employ a student from the local college to take care of her newborn, Gil; the latter, a 20-year-old girl who hasn't figured out anything about life yet, see in Elizabeth what she wants to be.
  
  From what we see, nobody should want to look up to Elizabeth tho. She's arrogant, elitist, self-centred and a liar who doesn't even feel guilty about lying; she doesn't want to be like her messed-up parents, and she doesn't want to be manipulated and a bitch like her father but she is. Do you want an example?
  1) She used all her money - and her husband’s - to support her jobless sister so she wouldn't have taken their father’s money, manipulating her, but without saying anything to her husband about all that.
  2) She keeps telling how the others women in the neighbourhood are awful when they are just trying to involve her - even if they are.
  3) She’s obsessed with her babysitter because she misses the good old days and even if yes, she helped Sam, she still needs to understand what a boundary is.
  4) She doesn't want any more kids, but she let her husband think she gets shots of hormones to help get pregnant. She tricks him and betrays his trust so many times, and she just sits there and watches him feeling bad for her.
  5) She convinces Sam’s friend to not help a couple having a child when she is well aware of all the difficulties and the pain of that. Even if she knows someone will get hurt, she has such an opinion of herself that she knows what’s best for everyone.
  
  Andrew, on the other hand, can be described as a loving person.
  Too bad he forced Elizabeth to move from Brooklyn to his forgotten hometown to follow a stupid dream - which everybody knew will never work - and forces her to have another kid. I mean, she told you she doesn't want another, keep your bullshit for yourself.
  
  And the young and sweet Sam has good intentions, but she still has to understand which battle to pick. With a creepy boyfriend in the UK and her desire to have a life she has chosen, she obviously doesn't know what to do. She's the only one who doesn't see the shady aspect of things and I could blame her youth for that but, as a young woman only one year older than her, I just think she should open her eyes and see the world for what it is.
  
  I'm not even gonna mention Sam’s spoiled friends or Elizabeth’s awful and neglecting family.
  But a special mention has to be given to George, the friend we all would want in our life, who is there to support you, has always a good word for you and never judge even your worst shame; he's a lighthouse in this ocean of ugliness.
  
  J. Courtney Sullivan‘s narrative is slow but interesting, perfect for a lazy summer reading. She wanted to write about unpleasant characters to show that you can treat someone as a friend but, at the end of the day, he's still a stranger.
  
  ↠ 3 stars
• 
  Ron Charles

  “Babysitter,” “nanny,” “caregiver,” “au pair” — we have many names for the people we welcome into our homes to tend what is most precious to us. As parents know, it’s a relationship fraught with anxiety, caught up in our need to work and our hunger for freedom. In a world without butlers and liverymen and cooks, the babysitter is the only domestic employee most of us will ever hire. How should we regard this person we’re so proud to pay a tad more than minimum wage, this almost-relative who might see our child walk for the first time?
  
  Kiley Reid explored that knotty relationship at the start of this year in her witty debut novel, “Such a Fun Age.” The story about a white woman determined to prove how much she appreciates her black babysitter cuts into the soft underbelly of liberal vanity.
  
  J. Courtney Sullivan approaches that terrain from a different angle in her new novel, “Friends and Strangers.” Race plays a smaller part in her story, but Sullivan is just as interested in the asymmetrical relationship between parents and caregivers. She focuses particularly on the culture of privilege that works so effectively to maintain class distinctions while erasing any acknowledgment of them.
  
  This is a more constrained story than Sullivan’s 2017 masterpiece,
  Saints for All Occasions,” which . . .
  
  To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post:
  
  https://www.washingtonpost.com/entert...
• 
  Cassidy

  2.5 stars
  
  This novel was...disappointing but average. I thought I would love it. New motherhood! Female friendships! Figuring it out! But I was bored and I kept waiting for it to ~get good~. I could see what the author was trying to do, but it didn’t connect. The snootiness of Elisabeth made me cringe and hope I didn’t sound like that around my friends, but I’m sure that was the point. Halfway through I did realize this is the white version of Such A Fun Age however the plot was not as strong and it missed the mark. Only reason I finished it so quickly was because I was camping and had nothing else to read. If you want an average summer read, here ya go!
• 
  Lisa

  This book, about the relationship between Elisabeth and her babysitter Sam, grew on me. By the end, I was totally invested and wished for more. There were times while reading that I yelled out loud at Elisabeth who is conflicted and SO self absorbed. Sullivan did an admirable job capturing both their lives and providing insight into the world around them.
• 
  Marialyce (absltmom, yaya)

  How well do we really know another person? We could be married to them, be their best friend, or know them for countless years and yet there are always things, secret, things hidden that make them often a stranger to us.
  
  Elizabeth and her husband have moved to a small town after living in the bright lights of New York City. Elizabeth having quit her job of being a writer, finds herself in a place where life seems to take a slower, backwards step and she feels adrift in the new climate she finds herself in. With a new baby plus a husband who goes to work, she sees herself as a woman whose life moved quickly to one where she struggles with what to do. She joins a book club, spends countless hours on the internet and finds herself caught in a pit of aimless banter. Aspiring to get herself back, she hires a young college student, Sam, to babysit and even though there is quite an age difference, Elizabeth finds herself becoming friends with Sam.
  
  Sam is an achiever and on a trip to London meets a man, an older man, who seems to sweep her off her feet. They become serious and Sam seems to be caught up in a relationship that may cause grief for her boyfriend carries secrets as well as limited ambition. While back in the states, she forms an attachment to Elizabeth's father-in-law and the two of them pursue the hollow man theory. Of course, once again we see the differences in age playing an important part in Sam's growth.
  
  As time continues, Elizabeth's fondness grows for Sam, and she is in a state of constant concern and worry over Sam's relationship with her boyfriend/fiance. Should she interfere or should she stay back? When the decision for Elizabeth comes, the whole relationship between she and Sam is shook and life takes a substantial turn for the both of them.
  
  I so enjoyed this exploration into friendship and the background J. Courtney Sullivan gave us about her characters. It as a fine examination into both the ages of differences and that of knowing when to voice opinions and thoughts to others. It so well depicted the rut one sometimes falls into when no longer working, what life takes on a pace that one can't adapt to, and how voices and change how one thinks can also carry resentment. Friendship that is wanted so badly often brings with it the inability to see differences and the very causes of those differences. Somehow class takes on a very definite role when acquiring what one to thinks can be a friend. The author's characters are complex and their lives ones that beg for change and yet perhaps when it does come breeds resentment and ill feelings.
  
  I recommend this story for its analysis into the minds and hearts of people who try too hard to be something they are ill equipped to be.
  
  Jan and I loved this story for it gave to us so much to talk about. It was so in depth that we could have gone on talking about the characters, their motivations, and their eventual falling away. Definitely this is one we both heartily recommend, particularly excellent for book club discussions. We are always on the lookout for more of these type stories.
  
• 
  Susanne

  Review posted on blog:
  https://books-are-a-girls-best-friend...
  
  Female Friendships can be complicated. Especially as we get older.
  
  The dynamics of class, friendship, marriage, motherhood, power, and privilege, are explored to absolute perfection in “Friends and Strangers” by J. Courtney Sullivan.
  
  Elizabeth is a married mother, who struggles with her new life in Upstate New York. Having recently moved from Brooklyn, life in Upstate New York, leaves much to be desired. Though she and her husband Andrew are happy, their marriage isn’t anything to write home about. Elizabeth is a published writer who is somewhat successful, though she is struggling to find inspiration in her new locale.
  
  Sam is a college student who begins babysitting for Gil, Elizabeth, and Andrew’s little boy. Sam has big dreams until she meets Clive while on holiday in England. Clive is an older guy who doesn’t exactly have his life together. A whirlwind romance ensues and soon the two plan to marry and Sam’s plans go out the window.
  
  Though Sam and Elizabeth become close friends, despite their age difference, they don’t tell each other everything, nor do they voice all of their opinions to each other about any concerns they might have, instead they simply try to be supportive, no matter what. What happens between these two during their friendship, highlights the reasons why sometimes it may be better to be that friend who speaks up and tells it like it is, and says the hard stuff, even if it hurts and/ or it’s hard to hear, instead of just being the supportive friend who simply stands by and gives comfort.
  
  Throughout this book, class and privilege take center stage, with Elizabeth and Sam, with Sam and her friend Gabby, and with Sam and Elizabeth’s father-in-law. It is dealt with extremely well and shows the right and wrong way to deal with things.
  
  “Friends and Strangers” was both fascinating and compelling. At times I wished I could jump through the pages of the book and tell these characters to truly talk to each other and inform them both that they had misconceptions about the other. If only they had talked, truly talked, perhaps things would have turned out differently, but alas, this is fiction and it was extremely well done.
  
  If you’re looking for brilliantly plotted, character-driven fiction, this is it.
  
  This was my first book by J. Courtney Sullivan, it will not be my last.
  
  Thank you to my local library for loaning me a copy of this audiobook.
  
  Review posted on Goodreads, Twitter, and Instagram.
• 
  Jennifer Fariss

  Honestly, I want to give this book ZERO stars, but I'm not a monster. This is the second book club pick from Jenna that I went for....um...two for two fails. Fool me once, shame on you...fool me twice....
  
  Ugh...this is the most forgettable book of all time. It is literally about NOTHING. So much nothingness, and I'm not sure how she filled 400 pages.
  
  I wish I could have just put it down and not finished, but I kept thinking SURELY this is building up to SOMETHING. And the something was such a dull fizz.
  
  I've already spent more time than deserved writing this review. Don't waste your time with this one.
  
  The end.
• 
  Caitlin

  This was.... not a good book. I kind of hated all of the main characters and started hate reading the end to see how it turned out. I genuinely was not rooting for anyone here- I think Elizabeth is just an awful person, her husband is like a shell of a person, and Sam is just.... kind of a dumb person. Don’t even get me started on Clive. Would not recommend. To anyone. There was no real story here. I’m sad this is how I finished my book challenge 🤣🤣
• 
  Jenna 🧵

  Solid, engrossing and page-turning read that kept me engaged and entertained even through, wait for it, suffering a freak caterpillar sting attack on a camping trip. Yep, that’s a thing! - at least if you hang out in or near the National Forests of Virginia, it is! Thanks again, 2020! However, thanks also to this book for keeping me preoccupied and distracted amidst caterpillar-induced trauma.
• 
  Lisa

  An enjoyable and insightful exploration of a unique friendship between two women who couldn’t be more different.
  
  
  SUMMARY
  Elizabeth is an accomplished writer and new mother trying to adjust to life in a small town after nearly 20 years in New York City. Alone with her infant son all day, she feels uneasy, misses her NYC friends and neglects her writing.
  
  Sam is a senior at the local women’s college struggling with decisions about her future. She is worried about exorbitant student loan debt, her romantic relationship and what that means for her future career.
  
  Elizabeth hires Sam to babysit and they begin to grow close. The differences between the women’s lives becomes starkly revealed in an betrayal that has devastating consequences. FRIENDS and STRANGERS reveals how a single year can shape the course of a life, and explores motherhood and privilege.
  
  
  REVIEW
  FRIENDS AND STRANGERS is enjoyable and insightful Women’s Fiction exploring a unique friendship between two women who couldn’t be any more different. Differences in backgrounds, class, age and wealth combine to create a complicated relationship between a mother and her child’s caregiver.
  
  The slowly-paced novel was easy and entertaining. While the pacing and lack of high drama initially bothered me, The delightful writing, and the realness of the story kept my head in the book. And I am glad it did. For me this is one of those books that you are thinking about days after you finish reading. It is so relevant today as distinctions between class and privilege are ever more present.
  
  My favorite part of this book was Sam’s diverse friendships. In addition to Elizabeth and her long distance boyfriend, she became close to Elizabeth’s unemployed and activist father-in-law, as well as the women who worked in the school cafeteria.
  
  Author Julie Courtney Sullivan is in a novelist and former writer for the New York City Times. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and son. Previous novels include Maine (2011), The Engagements (2014) and Saints for All Occasion (2017).
  
  
  Publisher Knopf Publishing Group/Random House Audio
  Published June 30, 2020
  Narrated Kate Rudd
  Review
  www.bluestockingreviews.com
  
  
• 
  SundayAtDusk

  This is a 400-page story about Elisabeth and Sam. Elisabeth is a published author in her 30s who has moved to a college town where her in-laws live. Her husband is pursuing an invention idea, and she is supposed to be working on her third book, while caring for their infant son. While Elisabeth has met the other women on her street, and is even in a book club with them, she doesn’t want to pursue a friendship with any of them. Instead, she regularly communicates with her best friend back in Brooklyn, and constantly reads the posts in an online mother’s group.
  
  Sam is a senior at a women’s college in the town Elisabeth moved to, and is trying to focus on both her studies and her boyfriend in London. She is from the middle-class, while most of the young women in her dorm are from upper-class homes. This helps Sam to notice the imbalances between the classes, and makes her more keenly aware of the struggles of the immigrant women who work in the food service department at her college. She works along with them at times, as a campus job, and considers them her friends, as she does many of the upper-class girls in her dorm. Her British boyfriend is a self-employed tour guide in his 30s, who is pushing her to get married when she finishes school.
  
  After seeing a job notice on a school bulletin board posted by Elisabeth, Sam goes to interview at Elisabeth's house. She gets the job and not only becomes Elisabeth’s babysitter, but also Elisabeth’s friend and confident. This friendship ends up both helping and hindering the two women in various ways, but there are no “devastating consequences” due to a betrayal, as the book’s description states. Thus, do not expect some tragic incident in this story. Simply expect lots of talk about friendship, college roommates, money issues, employment, pregnancies, IVF procedures, mommy depression, class differences, family problems with parents and a sister, both unhappy and happy childhood memories, happiness and unhappiness with men, kids and babies, etc.
  
  I really want to call this novel”chick lit", but sometimes fear that’s a reductionist type of label. Yet I fear this book is nowhere near as important, in regards to friendship and social issues, as it appears to want to be. In fact, at times it seems like the type of story that is trying to “educate” the reader on topics, as opposed to the topics coming up in conversations and thoughts in a more natural way. There are lots of conversations about trivial matters that easily could have been cut from the novel, too, with no loss whatsoever to the reader. In addition, the epilogue raises more questions than provides answers and insight. All in all, a somewhat insightful story about modern young women, but not really anything to write home about. A review is all I could write about this book.
  
  (Note: I received a free ARC of this book from Amazon Vine.)
• 
  MicheleReader

  Friends and Strangers offers a look into the lives of two women who are at very different stages of their lives yet end up providing the friendship each one is in need of. Elizabeth is an accomplished author and new mom. Her husband is a bit of a dreamer. They leave their Brooklyn home to live in upstate New York near a small women’s college. Samantha (Sam) is a senior at the college. A talented artist, Sam is trying to decide which path her life should take after graduation. As graduation approaches, Sam is hired as a part-time babysitter for Elizabeth’s baby Gil.
  
  This slow-moving book was often humorous as well as dramatic – as life is. Issues of honesty, class, friendship, family, money and more are addressed. The main characters are flawed. At times likable, at times frustrating.
  
  I can enjoy books with characters that are not in the same stage as my life but this time I had a hard time connecting with them. I fully understand the varied feedback on the book from high praise to lack of enthusiasm. This is clearly a book where you need to see your life experiences in one of these characters to fully enjoy it. So jump on board if you can relate.
  
  Rated 3.5 stars.
  
• 
  Fareya

  
  Friends and Strangers by J Courtney Sullivan is a leisurely paced, emotionally insightful, contemporary drama that explores topics such as motherhood, female friendships, wealth distribution, power, privilege, complexity of relationships and also a bit of politics and social media.
  
  The story alternates between Elizabeth and Sam, the two primary characters. Elizabeth is a writer and new mom, and has recently relocated from the city (NYC) to a small college town, where her husband is a college professor. Sam is a senior at college and has been hired by Elizabeth as a part-time nanny for her baby boy, Gil. Motherhood isn't proving to be the experience she hoped for and Elizabeth is fraught with life's monotony. She misses her life in the city, her friends and spends too much time scrolling on social media. On the other hand, Sam who is still figuring out her life, is absolutely awestruck with Elizabeth and her perfect life - a loving husband, an adorable baby, tastefully decorated home and the effortless elegance with which Elizabeth carries herself, she is everything Sam hopes to be in a few years.
  
  “Your twenties are about getting the things you want—the career, the man. Your thirties are about figuring out what to do with that stuff once you’ve got it.”
  
  With every chapter, we delve deeper into the lives of these two characters, are introduced to secondary ones, realize that hardly anything is how it seems at first and thereby explore a bunch of themes.
  
  Astute, perceptive and deeply resonant,
  Friends and Strangers is an expertly written piece of realistic fiction that will stay with its readers. Recommended if you enjoy a good character driven literary fiction.
  
  **A free finished copy was provided by Booksparks as part of their Summer Reading Challenge #SRC2020. All opinions are my own.**
• 
  Nat

  Hey yo, suburban mom check.
  
  
  
  
  In all seriousness, reading the blurb of this book, I had an inkling it would remind me of the film Tully, which I talked about
  here, featuring that intimate bond that forms instantly in close quarters between moms and caretakers of a newborn baby. Being on the receiving end of someone's non-judgemental and kind spoken nature was magnetic. So I started reading.
  
  “It was five o’clock in the morning. In a moment, the baby would wake. She wondered how long their bodies would remain in sync like this, hers anticipating what his was about to do.”
  
  It's like those people that wake right before their alarm clock goes off. Science?
  
  Within the first page, I felt the potential this book would hold. I usually mark passages I like throughout my reading experience but then out of laziness tend to not write it down after I'm done reading. But this book was too good to forget what I liked about it. I felt it in those lines that immediately provoked an "oh, I know that feeling." Like each sentence presents a memory of its own. I mean, let me ask the audience:
  
  “Carrying out otherwise mundane tasks in a foreign country felt like an achievement. Small victories like catching the right train or learning the funny names of things in the grocery store: Rocket. Aubergine. Fairy cakes."
  
  I love this.
  
  And:
  
  “Elisabeth scrolled until she came to the place where she’d left off before bed."
  
  Or this next detail, painting how Elisabeth lurks in the mom FB group so much, she remembers past milestones of the others: “Mimi Winchester, who had recently purchased a townhouse for three million, was selling a used boy’s coat, size 2T, for nine dollars.”
  
  The ins and outs of Facebook groups, similar to WhatsApp groups, you can quickly catch someone's personality based on their replies.
  
  “Half the pleasure of the group was talking about it with someone in real life. ”
  
  This right here captures exactly why I watch certain people on Youtube only to later discuss them in real life with my younger sister.
  
  I took joy in passages that felt revealing on the intimacy of everyday thoughts.
  
  “She wished she had thought to record the conversation, or that she had brought a pen and paper to take notes. Maybe there was a book in all this. The pitfalls of trying to make friends in middle age, or suburban moms who drink too much.”
  
  “It was her way of drawing a line between them and herself, playing the observer so she didn’t have to care whether or not she fit in. She’d been doing it all her life. Andrew said she was like this because she was a writer, but he had that backward; she was a writer because she was like this.”
  
  I wonder if writers really note down real life conversations to later build on that in their own world.
  
  Though I was impressed by the writing, I couldn't shake of my growing annoyance at Elisabeth's privilege. Like, I couldn't bear to hear her complain about some slight inconvenience in her rich life because that would require an absurd amount of patience that I simply do not possess right now. Oh, woe is Elisabeth...
  
  What is privilege? Read this:
  
  “Elisabeth felt guilty enough without the reminders from George. When they still lived in the city, they got food delivered almost every night for dinner, even after she read an article about how the website they ordered from was killing restaurants. She always meant to tip in cash, because the article said it was the only way to be sure the delivery guy got the money. But many nights, she didn’t have any small bills, so she just added the tip online and hoped for the best, giving the man who arrived at her door an extra-wide smile as she took the warm paper bag from his hands.
  
  This made me frustrated. This is why I could not warm up to her character. If anything, the author succeeded at writing that one person we all know who's completely unaware to the world around her. The author knew what she was doing with crafting this character. I could definitely see Elisabeth growing to be like Elena Richardson in
  Little Fires Everywhere.
  
  

  

  
  
  Elisabeth becoming aware of her privilege at the end was too quickly skimmed over, in my eyes. It didn’t leave a lasting impression. I’m sure a lot of white suburban moms will read this book so I wished it would’ve lingered a bit more on those moments and discussions that raise difficult questions.
  
  Sam, a struggling college student, coming in right at this time to save the day was much needed. Having this dual-perspective made me love this book more. Even seeing Elisabeth through Sam’s eyes made me view her differently. Sam definitely understood the assignment.
  
  “They never had actual voice-to-voice contact anymore. There were no hellos or goodbyes, just an ongoing conversation that they picked up and ended several times throughout the course of a day.״
  
  When I think back on all my favorite parts of this book, Sam is always present. She left a lasting impression. More so, the nature of her changing relationships during her senior year of college. Oh, and Clive the Creep? No, thank you. I felt so annoyed when Sam would have these moments of clarity sneaking into her conscious of "hmm, maybe this way older dude isn't for me..." And then she would just push it right back down because she wasn't ready for things to change. It's so frustrating seeing someone you love waste their best years on someone who doesn't deserve them.
  
  “Aren’t they adorable?” Sam said.
  “I’m taking notes,” Clive replied. “That’ll be us before long.”
  He stood behind Sam and wrapped his arms around her. Elisabeth wanted to snatch Sam away, to carry her to safety. For the first time ever, she wondered if she ought to call Sam’s mother.”
  
  I felt this throughout the book. How do you stop someone from making a colossal mistake?
  
  This is the piece that captures it all, for me. Give it a read:
  
  “I do love him,” Sam said, but she sounded defeated. “I think things will be better when we’re settled. Like you.”
  Elisabeth both envied and felt sorry for her that she was naïve enough to see marriage as an ending, an achievement, instead of the start of something so much harder and more complicated than what came before.
  “The big secret of adulthood is that you never feel settled,” Elisabeth said. “Just unsettled in new ways. Your twenties are about getting the things you want—the career, the man. Your thirties are about figuring out what to do with that stuff once you’ve got it.”
  Ten years ago, all the women she knew dreamed of meeting someone and getting married. Now Elisabeth didn’t have a friend who hadn’t fantasized about divorce.”
  
  I can't stop rerunning these lines in my head.
  
  Also, captivating is the psychology behind our thinking. Like, Sam and Elisabeth each think their own thoughts about the other's actions but don't feel the need to share because they're on good terms and why sour the mood. I support your choice even if I silently disagree. But then when it all comes racing out, what has been pent up inside of them throughout the novel, it felt cathartic.
  
  “But I know you, Sam. You have this great family, you love kids, you’re super mature. You want to skip the big steps and be there. But everyone has to take those steps. It’s all the mistakes you make in the middle that determine how strong you are at the end. You can’t hide behind this thing with Clive forever.”
  
  They see each other clearly with all their faults and imperfections. Everything Elisabeth voices is something Sam has thought before in her own mind but then pushed away because she'd rather not say goodbye to this chapter in her life. It's beyond difficult trying to stop someone to see the mistake they're about to make.
  
  The psychology of planting a seed in someone's mind and hoping it grows in their mind in the right moment. Like, Sam using someone else's words in an argument. Ah, just those feelings of finally confronting what you've been running from was an experience to read here.
  
  “The hardest lessons were the ones you had to learn over and over again.”
  
  Readers who would like to delve more deeper into the discussions brought forth, check out
  Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng. Also, readers who enjoy the observance of every day life will see it mirrored in
  Here I Am by Jonathan Safran Foer.
  
  
  
  

  
  

  
  
  
  
  This review and more can be found on my blog.
• 
  Jamie

  This book was a miss for me and I skimmed over a lot.
  The characters were hard to relate to and hard to even like.
  This author is a hit or miss for me and even though I liked the beginning of this book it just didn’t work for me.
  Thanks to Edelweiss for my advanced ebook copy.
• 
  Katie Cantwell

  This book could have said some valuable things about privilege, money, motherhood, and self-awareness, but it stopped short. By the last page of the epilogue, none of the characters had seen any real growth or faced the consequences of their actions. If I had read this book in 2015, it would have been dull, but harmless. In 2020, it feels willfully oblivious. I would advise reading something else.
• 
  Jerrie

  The strength of this book was in the well-developed, believably human characters the author has created. There are a lot of themes in the book - suburban motherhood drama, true family and friends, women’s and worker’s rights, etc. It’s almost too many things to make a cohesive narrative, but the author wove them together well.
• 
  Nawal Qarooni

  Verdict is still out on whether or not I recommend this fiction story about a mom and her babysitter, which ultimately sank into issues of wealth, class, relationship deceit, boundaries and life choices. There was almost too much there in terms of content and also in the writing: no detail left unnamed. Often, I asked myself why I should care. But I laughed aloud at a few parts, identified at times with the characters, and descriptions of a certain Brooklyn mama group were astute. Cue shoulder shrug.
• 
  Celia

  Elisabeth is a journalist who has successfully published two previous narrative non-fiction books. She is trying to write a third. She is a new mother of 6 month old Gil. She needs to find a nanny to care for Gil so she can buckle down and write the book.
  
  Sam is a 21 year old senior at the local women's college. She has nanny experience. She is the perfect person to be Gil's nanny. She had served as one when on an extended stay in London. While on that trip, she meets Clive, a man in his thirties, who falls madly in love with her.
  
  The story is alternately told by Elisabeth and Sam. Each has a complicated set of relationships.
  
  Elisabeth has a younger sister, Charlotte, and two parents who are each dysfunctional in their own way. She is married to Andrew, a wanna be inventor, who is "... sensitive. In both senses of the word."
  
  Sam has a flighty room-mate and her relationship with Clive, this older man, is complicated too. Most people think he is not right for her, but she is in love and blind to the faults of the relationship.
  
  Elisabeth and Andrew had moved to a small up-state town from Brooklyn. They want to be near Andrew's parents: Faye and George. George is an especially interesting character. He feels that those 'higher up' are not accountable and the 'little guy' is suffering. He forms a group to make people aware of this and, hopefully, encourage others to inspire change.
  
  There are many themes in this book: Motherhood (both good and bad mother role models), Infertility (Gil is an in vitro baby), Child Care, Lies and Betrayals (Elisabeth, Sam and Charlotte each contribute).
  
  I have read two other books by this author:
  Commencement (another story set in a college town), and
  Saints for All Occasions (full of complicated relationships). I loved them both. Sullivan is known for her college town stories and her Irish family-centered novels. I plan to read her other two novels as well.
  
  This book was published on June 30. I found the book available on Overdrive on July 1. Nobody had snagged it yet!! I had not planned to read it so soon after publication, but am certainly glad I did. Not everybody was as immersed or impressed with this book as I was. But I hope you will give it a try.
  
  5 stars
• 
  Elaine

  Friends and Strangers was my first book by the author, and it won't be my last, yet it wasn't a good introduction to her work.
  
  The writing was fine, but as I was reading, all I could think was, What's the point?
  
  There's no story here; no substance. I HATE it when this happens.
  
  I read this last week and if you asked me what the book was about, all I can think of to say is, "Nothing."
  
  I kept reading, though. Silly me. Why? Because I kept hoping it would get better. Joke's on me.
  
  Nothing happens; no real conflict, just a dull narrative of an entitled woman named Elisabeth with a screwed up family, rich parents, a brat sister and Sam, a hard working student who becomes her nanny.
  
  No one is likable; character development is decent but I didn't connect with anyone, much less Sam.
  
  I also felt her relationship with her British man-candy, Clive, was so phony and contrived, I laughed when he appeared on the page.
  
  The author spends a crap load of filler pages describing how much Sam and Clive are in lust, how much sex they have, how much time they spend cuddling and mooning over each other.
  
  Is it puppy love/lust? I guess. Do I care? Nope.
  
  Where's the drama? The conflict? What's going on here?
  
  I just spent 3 days reading about...nothing.
  
  Who is going to give me those three days back?
• 
  Emelie Gaughan

  My favorite by this author so far!
  
  I've read Commencement and Saints For All Occasions and really enjoyed both, but this one kept me reading long into the night. The plotline and the characters are equally compelling and I am always so blown away by how Sullivan can write such relatable characters of any age. She has both range and a knack for getting to the center of the human condition, making us see our own reflections in the thoughts that the characters have.
  
  Definitely pick this up!
• 
  Jenna Hager

  “Friends and Strangers” by J. Courtney Sullivan is a book about living an authentic, fulfilling life. Told through the alternating perspectives of two women, the novel presents two coming-of-age stories — one of a young mother and another of her college-age nanny. It’s a compelling book that takes on modern issues surrounding adulthood, motherhood and class.
  
  From the outside, Elisabeth seems to have it all. She has a beautiful baby, is married to a loving husband and is completing a three-book publishing deal. But when she and her family move from Brooklyn to her husband’s hometown in upstate New York, her well-maintained façade cracks. Elisabeth finds herself lonely and exhausted and searches for more time to focus on her next book, which leads her to hire a part-time nanny, Sam. The two women end up forming an unlikely friendship that ultimately changes the course of their lives.
  
  “Friends and Strangers” ultimately reveals that happiness comes from authenticity and purpose rather than wealth, success and secrets. Sullivan’s clever writing makes this pick the perfect summer read—delicious and compelling through the last word.
  
  
  Click here to get your copy and read with me today!