Friends Like These

by Victoria Routledge

Sekt oder Selters - bk882; Blanvalet im Goldmann Verlag; Victoria Routledge; pocket_book; 2000

Genres: Fiction, Chick Lit, Romance

Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Victoria Routledge worked in publishing for three years before her first novel, Friends Like These, was published.
She was born in the Lake District and now lives in London and writes full time as a novelist and journalist.

Reviews

[Ren · Rating 2 out of 5]

I just couldn't get into this book. I didn't make it far at all but I don't have any desire to try again.

[Stef Rozitis · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ok so this is so anti-feminist that the Australian Conservatives would recommend it (if they could read). Caroline gets constructed as completely unlikeable, duplicitous and a thorough bitch just so she can be slut-shamed and the reader will enjoy it as a sort of symbolic mob violence even though consistently throughout the story, awful as she is I think the males get away with a lot more but somehow they are reclaimed for the determinedly smiling and posing heterosexuality at the heart of this book.

The writing is disappointing too, being not quite as crap in some parts as I have learned to expect from a frivolous anti-feminist book (it made me laugh how often it specifically referred to feminism as grim and boring and trying to ruin the "fun" of heterosexual consumption - ie wedding planning and other mind-numbing things). I mean considering how much "fun" they are all having looking at catalogues of bride's dresses and table-runners and whatever...it's perhaps not surprising that they empty so many hundred's of bottles of Pimms and expensive champagne (though maybe someone should tell the author and characters that foetal alcohol syndrome is a thing).

It's very nearly satire, and very nearly funny, and very nearly decently written but determinedly not with sudden changes in POV in the middle of a paragraph and a sudden "snog" because her mouth was open and noone communicating literally ANYTHING to ANYBODY. I know that "relationship books" are always about failures to communicate and involve people's neuroses but to believe that people would stay friends with someone/s that they loathe for so many years. When it comes to the friends you meet at uni, it is actually way easier to get busy with life and work and all that comes after and not have time for them, it takes HUGE EFFORT to stay friends with people from uni so the idea of just unenthusiastically being pulled along when you have nothing in common is ridiculous.

Marks also deducted for the way "lesbian" identities (or "just a stage") were handled. FFS!!!!!

[Bookguide · Rating 3 out of 5]

This certainly isn't one of the best chick-lit books I've read. I found the first 50 pages rather slow and found myself having to concentrate more than I would expect to for this sort of book. Apart from Rachel and her lovely boyfriend Fin, none of the characters were very appealing. In fact, the terrible thing about this book is the betrayal and backstabbing in a group of friends which is from the outside tight-knit and supportive, yet in which everyone remains on their guard and afraid to confide. Once the friends arrive at the house where they are going to celebrate Laura and Mike's engagement, the pace picks up, as the reader knows that something - probably something awful - is going to happen to break through the barriers. And that is what kept me wanting to reach the end as fast as I could, to find out what would happen. The final hours at the cottage include melodrama, revelations and farce, and the question is, will anyone end up happy at the end, or will everything have changed irretrievably? Of course, now I know, but I won't spoil it for other readers!

[Hannah · Rating 1 out of 5]

Even when considering the Zeitgeist of when it was written, this story is shockingly backwards and anti-feminist.

[Nimh · Rating 2 out of 5]

I only added a second star because, in a way, it's an achievement of the story that I kept reading it through to the end, having started about mid-way after I picked it up in the bargain bin of a bookshop/coffeeshop, even though every single character in the story is unbearably obnoxious and singularly unsympathetic.

Well, I suppose Alex was more or less bearable .. she seemed slightly sympathetic and down-to-earth at least. The rest of the people in this book are some of the most self-absorbed, materialist, petty, shallow, drama-queen, spoiled middle class busybody brats I have never met. It makes it rather hard to get engaged with the story, let alone care much for the characters, if you constantly have to suppress the instinct of wanting to scream at everyone involved.

[Karschtl · Rating 2 out of 5]

Eine Clique von ehemaligen College-Freunden treffen sich anlässlich einer Verlobungsfeier für ein Wochenende in einem Landhaus. Bei dieser Gelegenheit herrscht jedoch nicht nur Friede, Freude, Eierkuchen. Es kommt zu Aufdeckung von Geheimnissen und Intrigen...

[Tory · Rating 1 out of 5]

The characters talked about their holiday to Guadalajara. In CHILE.

Yeah. Guadalajara? NOT IN CHILE.

[Jody · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved this study of longtime friends