Story about the relationship between Elisabeth and Sam. One a journalist and new mum, the other her babysitter. To be honest I found this a slow read, where not much happens and decided to finish about 40% in

I greatly enjoyed this book, thank you for giving me a preview copy. The plot was interesting and fast paced and I sympathised with the characters. This is the first novel I have read by this author but I hope it will not be the last!

I received this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Friends and Strangers is the story of Sam and Elizabeth, who meet at pivotal times in each of their lives. Sam is a senior in college, in a long distance relationship with an older man, trying to decide what her plans are following graduation. She works as a babysitter for Elisabeth, who is a writer that has just moved from Brooklyn to the suburbs with her husband and young baby, and is struggling to adjust to the changes in her life. The story follows them through this year, where they cleave to each other and become friends, blurring the lines of their formal relationship, and how the impact of this will impact them and their futures.

I found this book very compelling, it took me a couple of days to read but I was very drawn into the story and was very keen to see how the story played out between the characters. It’s a very interesting study about how people that you meet at particular times can have long-reaching effects on your life, guiding you to make different choices that what you may have made otherwise. It’s almost like a Sliding Doors premise - one or two different choices at particular points in life could steer you in very different directions. I thought it was an interesting examination of friendships - you can be drawn so close to someone for a period of time and feel like you’ll be friends forever, but choices and circumstances can impact the friendship to send you off in completely different directions. I thought this book was great, I’d definitely recommend it!

A novel about a first time mother and her college age babysitter. To be honest, I gave up. I wasn't invested in the characters or the plot. It was a sleeper for me.

I loved it - so full of keen insights and sharp observations about motherhood, friendship, growing older, and the peculiar loneliness of moving home. Highly recommended.

An enjoyable read that highlighted the differences between the haves and the havenots in America as well as exploring relationships and a variety of family dynamics.

Friends and strangers is one of those books where not much actually happens but you find yourself drawn into the lives of the characters. Easily read, somewhat relatable, I would have preferred a more comprehensive ending however.

A slow-paced, gentle and entertaining read that brings together an interesting (and unexpected) mix of topics including class, capitalism, IVF and social media. The unlikeliness of the two characters makes the book more relatable for different types of people which is good.

As my first read on the ins and outs of facing fertility challenges, I found it to be a very thorough and honest narration of the entire process and it struggles.

The book is described as "an insightful, hilarious, and compulsively readable novel about a complicated friendship between two women who are at two very different stages in life", however, as Sam establishes later along the way, building a friendship with an employer is a bit of a grey area - can it really be a friendship when money is involved and one is so easily replaceable? This is what I found hard to work my head around whilst reading this novel.

Overall, it is a good but not particularly memorable read.

Friends and Strangers, J Courtney Sullivan

An insightful, hilarious and compulsively readable novel about the complicated friendship between two women at very different stages in life.

This is both slow paced and compassionate, an intimate portrayal of women, friendships and motherhood.

With engaging characters, sensitive approach to issues such as privilege, power, inequality and politics.

This is a timely must read.

This book tells the story of a friendship between her employer and her babysitter

I did find this book very long winded, and I did at times have to stop reading this book and come back to it at another time .

With thanks to Netgalley & John Murrey press for the ARC of this book in exchange for this review

I really enjoyed this book and the fact that there weren't any major twists or turns, it's just a story of two women at different points in their lives throughout a year.

Elisabeth is a new mother living in suburbia, far away from her inner city life. Sam is hired as the babysitter during her last year at university and a friendship of sorts is established.

The book focuses on privilege both in terms of race and class and how sometimes we are blinded by our own privilege when we only see it from our own point of view.

There was a lot to relate to in this story and lots of likeable characters - flaws and all. Overall a great read!

This is a well written book that gently meanders along. It is a tale of relationships, different friendships and different life stages. I particularly enjoyed the two main characters Elizabeth and Sam. The book explores the relationships very well. It is an enjoyable pleasant read but for me it is missing something that would make it a great book. I was interested and cared about the characters but I did not care enough for the book to be a page turner in that I could not wait to see what was happening next.

Absolutely loved this! Friends and Strangers explores the relationship between Elisabeth, a new mother, and her babysitter Sam. They cultivate a friendship that helps them navigate their respective situations. The story centers around the concept of privilege, but it’s also about compassion, boundaries and the choices you make in life. The story was planned out so meticulously and I loved all the minor characters that we got to discover as the story unfolded. I wish the ending gave more away but other than that it was flawless!

Really enjoyed this story which was well written with complex but likeable characters. Elisabeth and Sam have seemingly little in common but forge a strong bond. Some good exploration of relationship dynamics, family and not belonging. Would love to know the story of what happened after......

Really enjoyed this book, which is centred on an unlikely friendship between two women at very different stages of their lives: a twenty something in her final year at uni and a thirty something new mum.

Both women felt like real people to me, with a proper mixture of good qualities and less likeable traits. The worries and challenges they face as the book progresses also rang very true, whether financial or emotional, and there were some great depictions of relationships - whether watching a first great love fall apart or trying to preserve a seemingly solid marriage through the ups and downs that life inevitably throws at it.

It's also rare to find a book which is as honest as this one about being a new mum, the conflicting emotions which go along with that, and how it impacts upon all the other relationships in your life. The acknowledgment that you can love your new baby to pieces and simultaneously need some time and space from them really hit the nail on the head for me!

So all in all, I would definitely like to read more of this author.

This is a gentle read, carefully exploring the contrast between Elizabeth, a new mum in her 30s, recently relocated to the sticks from the city and hanging on to her old life via facebook rather than fully throwing herself into her new life.
Sam is a college student, hired to be Elizabeth's part time nanny, working multiple jobs to cover her tuition and also struggling with her friendships.
The book explores both of the women's relationships with each other and with the mom community and the college community, the friendships made across social borders, the anxieties about fitting in and the outcomes of assumptions made.
I really liked Sam and enjoyed watching her grow and learn through her varied friendships with college workers, privileged students and with Elizabeth's father and his hollow tree theory cronies. I had less empathy toward Elizabeth, I found her shallow and wanting as a person (but great as a character!)
A really great summer read.

I grew up in the area the book is based.Now it is gentrified expensive then it was just a middle class Brooklyn neighbored.This novel a story of a woman a young mother who hires a young woman to be her nannie Their story the class struggles theIr relationship and the neighborhood the women she socialize with the competitive nature of the times.And the personal struggles between the two women,#netgalley#friends&strangers

I really enjoyed this book but I will open this review by saying that if you like high drama and plot on a grand scale then this isn’t the book for you. The premise is very simple; examining the lives of women of different ages and economic backgrounds (and also some exploration of modern manhood too) using two main characters. What really makes this book is the author’s skills in characterisation and setting. Both are so blindingly real and relatable that pretty much any reader can find something that is familiar and echoes their own experiences.
Elizabeth, a journalist who has recently left Brooklyn for the boonies and had her first baby is in her 30’s and Sam her babysitter is a 21 year old college student who she hires as a babysitter. Both are from vastly different family backgrounds and socioeconomic backgrounds but both are intelligent, artistic types. At first it appears that they have much more in common with each other than with their contemporaries but how true is this? As the novel progresses the author shows us, little by little that friends can also be complete strangers and that the people who ‘shouldn’t’ be your friend for whatever reason can actually be the best kind of friend there is.
There are so many themes running through this book as well as the obvious one of friendship; class, privilege, money, system of government and its control of the populace. The attitudes of the baby boomer generation versus the millennial, the lies we tell and the damage they can do or the upset they can prevent. Our motivations for acting as we do, marrying who we do or pursuing the careers/dreams that we do.
The ending was fantastic and left me creating scenes to fill in the gaps and explaining how things in the epilogue came to be. I will definitely read more from this author.

“As you made your way through life, there were people who stuck, the ones who stayed around forever and whom you came to need as much as you needed water or air. Others were meant to keep you company for a time. In the moment, you rarely knew which would be which.”

The story mainly focuses on relationship of two women: Elisabeth, a new mother who finds companion and a friend in Sam, a college student and her babysitter. The story revolves around them and goes on as their relationship changes with time and get affected by decisions they make. The story weaves around all the supporting characters so seamlessly that not a single character seems worthless. All of them has their own part to play with their own separate lives.

The story also highlights class segregation in the society and their struggles, capitalism, IVF and some bitter realities of social media. There are many scenarios in the book which are hilarious and quite relatable.
So, without giving out any spoiler I’m gonna share an incident from the book which actually made me keep the book aside and laugh for a while. “This particular incident is about a woman who mistook a man being a “pervert” and then she posted a picture of that man on Facebook group with a warning to be careful. Another woman also supported this. In few hours it got circulated on every woman related blog and groups. Then next day, Original post got deleted with a statement that she found out that man was taking pictures of his own kids without any apology directed to the man or the family for defaming him.”

I could easily relate to the character of Elisabeth as an employer and to the character of Sam as a student. George is another character who’s very interesting. Overall, it’s a great read and recommended to everyone, especially if you’re into women fiction.😊

Thanks to Netgalley and the Publisher to approve the request to review an early ARC.

This book is extremely well written but for some reason I found it difficult to get into. Sometimes I think it's just the mood you are in at the time of reading. I'm sure this is a really good book and one I will return to again in the future to read.