Meg Rosoff writes emotions so well, and I enjoyed this tale of a girl adrift in a big city and a slightly-too-intense friendship. The characters were great, and I was totally immersed.

This YA book is a fresh and original account of female friendship in 1980s New York. I'm way past the target age range of the book but I found the richness of the friendship between Beth and Edie absolutely addictive. Highly recommended.
Thanks to Bloomsbury, Meg Rosoff and Netgalley for the arc.

Knew Rosoff as a children’s/Y’a author and unfortunately just wasn’t fully convinced by this transition into more adult writing - loved the setting and the time period though!

An evocative read, perfect for a boiling hot summer. A fantastic edition to the, much underwritten, female friendship genre.

I had high hopes for this book which I perceived to be a coming of age story but it didn’t hold my attention like I thought it would.

Such a beautiful tale !

I couldn’t put it down and was completely captivating from the first page to the last !!

Thank you netgalley and the author for the opportunity to read this

Really great read, loved this.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for letting me access this book in exchange for my honest feedback.

I absolutely loved The Great Godden, and Friends Like These was a fantastic follow up. Would definitely recommend.

A glorious evocative coming of age novel, set in early 1980s New York; Beth moves to NY to intern at a newspaper and quickly falls in with a close group of friends. The intensity of their friendship and how it affects 18 year old Beth brought back a lot of memories, Its quite a short book but the story is rich and full of lovely intense adolescence.
Thanks to Netgalley for the chance to read it.

Read this book whilst staying in NYC & as set there it felt very evocative. I enjoyed this more than some Rosoff’s other books which I feel can be overrated….

I loved The Great Godden last year, and this year Meg Rosoff has written another fantastic coming of age novel set over one summer. Friends Like These is set in New York in the summer of 1983 and I've been madly googling to see if it's autobiographical because it all seems SO REAL.

It's the story of Beth, who sees herself as a suburban, plain, pretty-normal kind of girl, who gets an internship at a New York paper one hot, hot summer. It's an eye-opening time, as she lives away from home for the first time, lives in a slummy sub-let and makes friends with fellow intern Edie- an intensely magnetic young woman who seems to understand what New York is all about- from fashion, happy hour margaritas to AIDS and petty crime; this is 1980's NYC- and takes Beth under her wing.

As the summer goes on, things start to unravel and Beth has to face some hard truths about the world and the people around her.

I think this is pitched as YA but I thought it was just a brilliant novel from the perspective of someone who is on the cusp of adulthood, trying to find out who she is- being impressed by new people and experiences , before finding out that maybe she's okay at life after all. And haven't we all been there?!

It's another lovely, slim novel which I read in 2 days, and I would really recommend it if you've a) ever been an 18 year old girl and b) want to feel like you're living in NYC in the early 1980's. You can just feel the humidity!

Apparently, there may be one more coming of age summer novel coming from Meg Rosoff, to complete this loose trilogy and I, for one, cannot wait!

Meg Rosoff’s new novel Friends Like These is a coming-of-age novel set in New York City in 1982 (a wonderful setting and fascinating time period) where 18-year-old Beth moves to Manhattan for a journalism internship over the summer. Her fellow intern, Edie, is charismatic and fun, and the two fall into an intense, heady friendship that becomes very intimate very quickly. It might have been my own experiences of these kind of friendships, but I certainly had the sense that a wounding betrayal was lurking…and that hunch proved correct!

I hadn’t picked up a Meg Rosoff book for years but hungrily tore through this one, so her storytelling powers have clearly only grown with time! She's particularly good with stories that centre around a protagonist’s loss of innocence. Those can be such cataclysmic events in your life, a clearly defined before and after. But hopefully, as Beth seems to discover, they make you stronger and wiser, and you learn a great deal about yourself in the process. I found this book immensely readable and enjoyable, and also deeply relatable.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC

A nuanced coming of age novel set in fast-paced NYC in the early 80’s as 18 year old Beth wins an internship with a prestigious newspaper meeting a host of glamorous, ambitious friends and experiencing things far beyond the world she’s been accustomed to. An engrossing read.

A pleasant enough but really quite inconsequential novel (YA perhaps?) about nothing very much. Certainly nothing that hasn’t been done before – and better. It’s the story of 18 year old Beth who arrives one hot summer in New York to be an intern at a newspaper and has the sort of summer you might expect a young woman who arrives one hot summer in New York to have. Her three fellow interns are all “types” and she soon develops an intense friendship with one of them, Edie, a troubled young woman who inevitably isn’t what Beth thinks she is – because Beth is inevitably completely naïve and unperceptive and never quite cottons on to what is happening around her. By the end of the summer, of course, she has seen the light and come of age and is older and wiser. A very ordinary tale indeed. One serious criticism I have is that this is the era of AIDS and I felt that references to the epidemic were crass and out of place.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC.

I generally enjoy Meg Rosoff's writing, as she usually taps into the consciousness of someone on the verge of adulthood. This book is no exception, dealing with issues of growing up, relationships and finding your place alongside the overarching theme of friendship and betrayal. However, I didn't enjoy this as much as Rosoff's past books such as How I Live Now, as the narrative voice felt a little muted. I was impressed with Beth's resilience in the face of Edie at the end of the book though - not many 17 year olds with that strength of character to resist being pulled back in again!

The perfect heatwave read! I loved the strong sense of place and period this conjured up, mixed with that endless summer sense of timelessness. This is the second Meg Rosoff book I've read and I thoroughly enjoyed them both.

A short novella style story about a New York summer. Beth has a summer internship at a NY newspaper and here she meets the tour de force that is Edie. At first bowled over by her, Beth soon realises that Edie is narcissistic, histrionic and a friend for a season, not a lifetime. Along the way Beth has many firsts, but learns many life lessons.

In general I'm not as engaged with short stories or novellas, but this was a very well written and enjoyable foray into a hot summer in NY.

This was a simple, fun, easy and quick read. The perfect type of book for your holiday, beach, pool kind of read. This is a first for me by the author and one I enjoyed and would read more of their work. The book cover is eye-catching and appealing and would spark my interest if in a bookshop. Thank you very much to the author, publisher and Netgalley for this ARC.

3.5/5.

I adore Meg Rosoff’s books, and have since I was a teenager. Her writing is sublime and I love how effortlessly she evokes those long, suffocatingly hot teenage summers that change everything. ‘Friends Like These’ had all of those elements, but it didn’t set me on fire in the way that her books usually do.

I still recommend it though as Rosoff is truly a spectacular writer.

Meg Rosoff creates a wonderful story about coming of age. Beth is referred to as a “bumpkin,” moving to New York City for a prestigious summer internship at a newspaper where she meets fellow intern Edie. What follows is an intense and domineering friendship.

I enjoyed Beth as the narrator, she is smart and funny. Her naivety makes her experiences more believable, and I felt sympathy for her as her struggles and negative experiences are ignored by Edie. Beth views herself as inferior to everyone around her. In her eyes, Edie is charismatic, intelligent, opinionated, and beautiful. Beth is immediately swept away by Edie and we do see her confidence in herself grow. Both characters are Jewish, and both portray a very different background. Edie comes from a very wealthy family of established New York society. Beth’s family are survivors of the Holocaust, and are haunted by the past. Edie is condescending to Beth about her heritage, viewing herself as a better Jew by passing snide comments or telling Beth directly.

I will say I was not alive during the 80’s, but from what I know I think Rosoff captured New York brilliantly. She creates a vivid and real New York, sweltering in summer heat, with the AIDs epidemic sweeping across the county. The only part I didn’t enjoy was the “reveal.” I felt that the betrayal was not what I had expected, I was thinking it would be bigger. However, it was still a captivating book that is perfect for a summer read.