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Are We Friends Yet? How to Deepen Your Relationships and Create the Community You Need
Are you ready to say goodbye to loneliness and hello to a life filled with meaningful friendships?
Making new friends in adulthood can feel awkward, even intimidating. Most of us were never taught how to navigate interpersonal relations or sustain friendships through life’s many changes. It’s no wonder so many of us feel isolated, even when we’re surrounded by people.
But the truth is, you don’t need to start over—you just need to see the connections already within reach.
In Are We Friends Yet?, speaker and host of the Friendship IRL Podcast Alex Alexander offers a compassionate and practical guide to making new friends, strengthening relationships, and expanding your support system in ways that feel natural, not forced.
Drawing from personal experience and years of helping others build connections, Alexander shares how to adapt your friendships to meet your evolving needs—especially during times of transition. With honesty and heart, she shows how investing in friendships during life changes can be a powerful (and essential) act of self-care.
In this book, you’
Explore the link between self-esteem, happiness, and connection.Identify which relationships matter most—and how to care for those relationships intentionally.Learn strategies for nurturing your most important communities, even with limited time or energy.Whether you’re reconnecting with old friends or starting fresh, Are We Friends Yet? is your invitation to build the relationships you’ve always wanted—and the community you deserve.
Making new friends in adulthood can feel awkward, even intimidating. Most of us were never taught how to navigate interpersonal relations or sustain friendships through life’s many changes. It’s no wonder so many of us feel isolated, even when we’re surrounded by people.
But the truth is, you don’t need to start over—you just need to see the connections already within reach.
In Are We Friends Yet?, speaker and host of the Friendship IRL Podcast Alex Alexander offers a compassionate and practical guide to making new friends, strengthening relationships, and expanding your support system in ways that feel natural, not forced.
Drawing from personal experience and years of helping others build connections, Alexander shares how to adapt your friendships to meet your evolving needs—especially during times of transition. With honesty and heart, she shows how investing in friendships during life changes can be a powerful (and essential) act of self-care.
In this book, you’
Explore the link between self-esteem, happiness, and connection.Identify which relationships matter most—and how to care for those relationships intentionally.Learn strategies for nurturing your most important communities, even with limited time or energy.Whether you’re reconnecting with old friends or starting fresh, Are We Friends Yet? is your invitation to build the relationships you’ve always wanted—and the community you deserve.
312 pages, Kindle Edition
Published June 16, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
June 18, 2026
This book had a strong premise and clearly comes from a place of wanting to help people build and maintain meaningful friendships, but it ultimately didn’t land for me. Rather than offering practical, actionable guidance, the book relies heavily on reflection, motivational language, and broad friendship principles.
Much of the advice (such as being authentic, setting boundaries, not overextending yourself, and recognizing that not all friendships require the same level of investment) reads as common sense or widely known relationship advice. While these are valid points, they’re presented more as repeated affirmations than expanded insights.
At times, the book feels more like a motivational talk about friendship than a practical guide to building it. It emphasizes mindset shifts (“show up as your authentic self,” “meet people where they are,” etc.) but doesn’t always translate those ideas into specific behaviors or decision-making tools, which made it feel repetitive and surface-level.
Overall, while the message is positive and well-intentioned, the execution felt repetitive and lacking in depth. This may resonate more with readers who are just beginning to think intentionally about friendships, but it didn’t offer much new insight for someone already actively prioritizing and maintaining relationships.
Much of the advice (such as being authentic, setting boundaries, not overextending yourself, and recognizing that not all friendships require the same level of investment) reads as common sense or widely known relationship advice. While these are valid points, they’re presented more as repeated affirmations than expanded insights.
At times, the book feels more like a motivational talk about friendship than a practical guide to building it. It emphasizes mindset shifts (“show up as your authentic self,” “meet people where they are,” etc.) but doesn’t always translate those ideas into specific behaviors or decision-making tools, which made it feel repetitive and surface-level.
Overall, while the message is positive and well-intentioned, the execution felt repetitive and lacking in depth. This may resonate more with readers who are just beginning to think intentionally about friendships, but it didn’t offer much new insight for someone already actively prioritizing and maintaining relationships.
June 17, 2026
I won this in a giveaway
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Are We Friends Yet? promises practical help for adult loneliness, making new friends, strengthening existing relationships, and building community without forcing connection. The book delivers by focusing on understanding the connections already within reach: who counts as an acquaintance, who is familiar, who is present, who is historic, who belongs to formal community, and who functions as family of choice, rather than starting over from scratch.
The book describes how friendships move between various stages. Consistency, introductions, and choosing the right kind of invitation for each level of closeness are discussed. A familiar person doesn’t need the same kind of invite as a close friend. Group settings, shared activities, or low-pressure meetups often work better than intense one-on-one plans.
Friendships are built on three roots: shared experiences, emotional intimacy, and story. Shared experiences come from work, hobbies, clubs, or recurring activities. Emotional intimacy involves details, memories, boundaries, and knowing someone personally. Story roots are about beliefs, expectations, and evidence. This explains why some friendships only work in certain contexts, why old friendships can still matter even if they don’t fit the present, and why expectations sometimes clash with reality.
The book offers practical ways to make time for friendship: friendship admin, recurring coffee dates, drop-in gatherings, parallel activities, open invites, errand hangouts, reading dates, catch-up calls, walking while talking, doing errands together, and including people into existing plans. Small, repeatable actions matter more than grand gestures.
It also covers support systems, selective sharing, boundaries, and how friendships change. Different people support different parts of life. Friendships shift when someone moves, gets married, has kids, leaves a job, or when the shared experience that held it together disappears. These changes are treated as real losses, but not every shift is a failure or someone’s fault.
The book isn’t marketed as a neurodivergent friendship guide, but its best material functions that way. Concepts like friendship admin, friendship categories, the three roots, appropriate invitations, boundaries, selective sharing, and shifting friendships make the hidden rules of friendship clearer.
Instead of assuming friendship is instinctively understood, the book explains what kind of connection exists, what holds it together, what level of action fits, and what evidence supports the relationship. This is the material often missing from neurodivergent friendship advice.
The book describes how friendships move between various stages. Consistency, introductions, and choosing the right kind of invitation for each level of closeness are discussed. A familiar person doesn’t need the same kind of invite as a close friend. Group settings, shared activities, or low-pressure meetups often work better than intense one-on-one plans.
Friendships are built on three roots: shared experiences, emotional intimacy, and story. Shared experiences come from work, hobbies, clubs, or recurring activities. Emotional intimacy involves details, memories, boundaries, and knowing someone personally. Story roots are about beliefs, expectations, and evidence. This explains why some friendships only work in certain contexts, why old friendships can still matter even if they don’t fit the present, and why expectations sometimes clash with reality.
The book offers practical ways to make time for friendship: friendship admin, recurring coffee dates, drop-in gatherings, parallel activities, open invites, errand hangouts, reading dates, catch-up calls, walking while talking, doing errands together, and including people into existing plans. Small, repeatable actions matter more than grand gestures.
It also covers support systems, selective sharing, boundaries, and how friendships change. Different people support different parts of life. Friendships shift when someone moves, gets married, has kids, leaves a job, or when the shared experience that held it together disappears. These changes are treated as real losses, but not every shift is a failure or someone’s fault.
The book isn’t marketed as a neurodivergent friendship guide, but its best material functions that way. Concepts like friendship admin, friendship categories, the three roots, appropriate invitations, boundaries, selective sharing, and shifting friendships make the hidden rules of friendship clearer.
Instead of assuming friendship is instinctively understood, the book explains what kind of connection exists, what holds it together, what level of action fits, and what evidence supports the relationship. This is the material often missing from neurodivergent friendship advice.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Title: Are We Friends Yet?
Author: Alex Alexander
Narrated by the Author
Format: 🎧
Publisher: Less Lonely Press / AlexAlex, LLC | Independent Book
Publishers Association (IBPA), Members' Audiobooks
Genre: Nonfiction
Pub Date: June 16, 2026
My Rating: 3.3 Stars
Pages: 312
About the Author~ When Alex Alexander was a little girl, she had no idea she was going to become an expert in building connection.
Not because she’s special… but because she’s desperate.
She’ll take risks, step outside of societal norms, and do just about anything to build the support system she needs.
Because somewhere deep inside, she knows what many of us forget: we were never meant to do this life alone.
I was drawn to this book as I am a High School Guidance Counselor and my Education which included a Master’s Degree with course work on Conflict Resolution, Group Counseling, Counseling and working with students and their parents who are from many different cultures. However, nothing on how to make friends or how to establish a meaningful relationship. I figure this was worth a read. There were some things that were worth writing down and putting in my Counselor’s Toolkit!
Want to thank NetGalley and Less Lonely Press / AlexAlex, LLC | Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA), Members' Audiobooks for granting me this audiobook.
Publishing Release Date scheduled for June 16, 2026.
Author: Alex Alexander
Narrated by the Author
Format: 🎧
Publisher: Less Lonely Press / AlexAlex, LLC | Independent Book
Publishers Association (IBPA), Members' Audiobooks
Genre: Nonfiction
Pub Date: June 16, 2026
My Rating: 3.3 Stars
Pages: 312
About the Author~ When Alex Alexander was a little girl, she had no idea she was going to become an expert in building connection.
Not because she’s special… but because she’s desperate.
She’ll take risks, step outside of societal norms, and do just about anything to build the support system she needs.
Because somewhere deep inside, she knows what many of us forget: we were never meant to do this life alone.
I was drawn to this book as I am a High School Guidance Counselor and my Education which included a Master’s Degree with course work on Conflict Resolution, Group Counseling, Counseling and working with students and their parents who are from many different cultures. However, nothing on how to make friends or how to establish a meaningful relationship. I figure this was worth a read. There were some things that were worth writing down and putting in my Counselor’s Toolkit!
Want to thank NetGalley and Less Lonely Press / AlexAlex, LLC | Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA), Members' Audiobooks for granting me this audiobook.
Publishing Release Date scheduled for June 16, 2026.
June 8, 2026
Thank you to NetGalley for the opportunity to review this audiobook.
I requested this audiobook because making friends as an adult is something I’ve been thinking about a LOT. I read a ton of books (non-fiction and fiction) about friendship, and I figured this would fit perfectly with that group. It did end up being a little different, since it contains exercises to evaluate many aspects of life, but it achieves some of the same goals.
While I did not take months to work through the book, there are a lot of helpful tips and exercises that would accomplish the goal of helping you evaluate your friendships, the amount of time you’d like to spend on them, and where/how you can establish new ones. That being said, the book is very repetitive, giving the same examples in many chapters, which might become frustrating.
Listening to this as an audiobook is not the right way to consume this material unless you’re reading along with a ebook or physical copy. The author advises writing down page numbers in your notebook so you know where to refer back for individual exercises. It’s a great piece of advice that can’t be completed via audiobook alone.
I requested this audiobook because making friends as an adult is something I’ve been thinking about a LOT. I read a ton of books (non-fiction and fiction) about friendship, and I figured this would fit perfectly with that group. It did end up being a little different, since it contains exercises to evaluate many aspects of life, but it achieves some of the same goals.
While I did not take months to work through the book, there are a lot of helpful tips and exercises that would accomplish the goal of helping you evaluate your friendships, the amount of time you’d like to spend on them, and where/how you can establish new ones. That being said, the book is very repetitive, giving the same examples in many chapters, which might become frustrating.
Listening to this as an audiobook is not the right way to consume this material unless you’re reading along with a ebook or physical copy. The author advises writing down page numbers in your notebook so you know where to refer back for individual exercises. It’s a great piece of advice that can’t be completed via audiobook alone.
June 17, 2026
Not only has this book got lots of practical advice about making time for friends, but it also talks about how important our friendships, our families or our found families are. It also manages to frame friendships into different categories, like historic friends or proximity friends, best friends not all friends are created equal, but we need them all it also talks about how we can move friends from one category to another, depending on whether we want to get closer or keep some distance between us.
One of the strongest suits of the book is how practical it gets in finding ways and time to see our friends which as all adults we know how it difficult it gets with a busy life. Some ideas discussed include recurring coffee dates, drop-in gatherings, parallel activities, open invites, errand hangouts, reading dates, catch-up calls, a standing Sunday drop-in, recurring game night, walking while calling a friend, doing errands together.
Thinking of friendship admin in this way really opens up lots of opportunities for seeing more of our friends, which is something we all probably want.
Thank you Less Lonely Press and Netgalley for this ALC.
One of the strongest suits of the book is how practical it gets in finding ways and time to see our friends which as all adults we know how it difficult it gets with a busy life. Some ideas discussed include recurring coffee dates, drop-in gatherings, parallel activities, open invites, errand hangouts, reading dates, catch-up calls, a standing Sunday drop-in, recurring game night, walking while calling a friend, doing errands together.
Thinking of friendship admin in this way really opens up lots of opportunities for seeing more of our friends, which is something we all probably want.
Thank you Less Lonely Press and Netgalley for this ALC.
June 18, 2026
A refreshing take on community and friendship! This book will get you thinking about your own relationships differently. The author encourages you to examine your current interactions and how you can lean into your strengths to deepen friendships. Highly recommend adding to your summer reading list!
June 20, 2026
Sadly, this is one of those books that should have been an article. The content feels stretched to fill a full-length book, with too much repetition and not enough substance. I gave up in Chapter 5.
I received this book from NetGalley. Thank you to the author and publisher. All opinions are my own.
I received this book from NetGalley. Thank you to the author and publisher. All opinions are my own.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Provides valuable insights on building, maintaining, and ending friendships. My only critique is that it was repetitive at times. Definitely keep a notebook at the ready if you want to work through the exercises the author suggests!
June 17, 2026
Making friends as an adult is incredibly challenging without the shared schedules of school and other relationships where you meet with people regularly, especially in an age where people just isolate themselves with their phones in public. I liked the graphics in the book.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews