3.5/5

Hal Ebbott's writing is the epitome of "showing not telling" and the way she creates characters and explores their relations to others was super satisfying to read. Even though we get an omniscient narrating style that dives into each character's head, I felt the characters were still incredibly nuanced and interesting, almost requiring readers to unravel the mysteries within them rather than explaining anything at all. While I enjoyed this immensely, I also found it a little tiresome and abstract at times, especially at the end when our characters are presented with a choice. The ending fell a little flat for me, but I still really enjoyed the character work throughout the entire book (first 50% especially) and am excited to see what other readers think of this story.

Disappointingly I found this book really difficult to get into, I started it twice but found the style quite off putting and difficult to follow as it seemed to change tense a lot. Once established the characters weren't people I wanted to spend time with and I didn't finish the book
Thank you to netgalley and Pan Macmillan for an advance copy of this book

Please see link for review.

I have reviewed Among Friends for book recommendation and sales site LoveReading.co.uk. I’ve chosen this title as a Liz Pick of the Month and a LoveReading Star Book.

On the whole I didn't enjoy this book at all. The principal event was unpleasant and the consequences handled very badly by the characters. The explanations were to my mind murky.
The characters were not to my taste.
Some readers will enjoy this complex miasma of thoughts and ideas, but not for me.
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

i love books like this. i cant tell you what kind of book but im sure many could lock it down. all i know is when this type of book is done well it truly is up there with my faves. im totally all in, enveloped in these peoples lives until the end. im not sure whether i like any or all. and that might be because they are sometimes so real and relatable. do we feel awkward at what we see in ourselves or those around us. or is just watching something so real and close just a bit "eeesh". but put that aside i love it. i love to watch this playing out of a family or group of people and really feel like we have a listening ear or watching eye of what you ordinarily might not.
but actually that comes mostly down to Hal and that writing. because wow it was stunning. done to some of the best ive read. it felt like i floated through this book with ease. right down to the fonts!
this book follow a group of friends as extension of two original friends. and now the families are a gang. entwined into each others lives. they've grown up together and then their children have now done the same. and lets just say its a little bit blissful their lives as they have a definite wealth.
but on one weekend and one meeting its not going to be the same old get together this time. because something happens which shocks and fractures and puts everything into question.
but what if this is the end. then how do either or all carry on when this will lead them to question everything. they would question who they are, what they hold dear, what they thought of the others and what they mean to others. because can you explode everything if the fallout feels too great? because you do everything for those you love right? right?
well this led me to asking questions of the characters, wondering where it would go and also required me to overthink my own life, ha! i did have to stop myself and say remember its a book. its a book you can just put it down and not question your life!
but no in all seriousness its just so good at getting completely into your mind but for this short time you read it that is for all the right reasons. i love coming across a book that manages to do that for that little time you are reading it. and perhaps longer still afterwards.
you see ive over thought and over written into my own review. youve got to the end so you cant now ignore me review so sorry about that. haha. but at the time it makes sense to all my waffling mind about this book.

Overall I enjoyed this book, but I did feel that it was a little slow to get started. The "act of violence" as advertised on the blurb didn't occur until nearly halfway through, and I felt that for a relatively short book I would have liked it to get going a bit sooner.

However, it is beautifully written and the characters are very well done - they're all clearly flawed, and yet some of them are really sympathetic too (in particular Amos and Anna). I thought the novel really captured the reality of a difficult situation, human relationships, and the differences between how we hope we'd behave in a crisis and how we actually do.

🤝 REVIEW 🤝

Among Friends by Hal Ebbott
Release Date: 26th June

Thank you @netgalley and @picadorbooks / @panmacmillan for the e-ARC!

⭐️⭐️⭐️.5/5

💭 - It’s an autumn weekend at a comfortable country house where two deeply intertwined families have gathered to mark a fifty-second birthday. Together, the group forms an enviable portrait of middle age. The wives and husbands have been friends for over thirty years, their teenage daughters have grown up together, and the drinks, dinners, rituals, and games that form their days all reflect the rich bonds between them. This weekend, however, something is different. An unforeseen curdling of envy and resentment will erupt into an unspeakable act, the ramifications of which are enormous. Accusations, denials, and shattered illusions follow, driving wedges between friends, spouses, children and parents, and exposing the treacherous fault lines on which these families have dwelt.

📝 - Okay this was a rollercoaster and one I read in a single day, which I simply do not do. The first 20% of this I was so expecting to DNF - the characters were so severely unlikeable it didn’t make sense why they were friends in the first place. Then as different perspectives on the crux of the story unfolded I got a lot more invested (the characters were still really quite horrible though). I was engrossed and intrigued, the writing really carried me along. However! That ending. Not necessary. Big thumbs down. I understand the idea and I know some will like it, but for me… not the one. Ebbott is a talented writer (especially for unlikeable characters), and I do think this is a good debut, a name I’ll keep an eye out for, but that ending has irritated me beyond belief.

#amongfriends #halebbott #netgalley #debutnovel #bookreview #bookreviewer #literaryfiction #bookstagram #bookstagrammer #books #newrelease

I found this short novel really over-hyped, I wasn't convinced by the motivations and actions of many of the characters here and the portrait of male friendship wasn't persuasive to me. I think ultimately I don't want to read about this issue from a male author, which is a personal preference. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

Write what you know is a classic piece of advice for authors and I can’t help thinking that it’s very ambitious for a debut novelist to write a book from the point of view of six people, two middle-aged married couples and two teenage girls. Ebbott is certainly a talented writer, the premise of the book is interesting and the plot handled well, but particularly at the start I was conscious of the author trying to write himself into the heads of his characters. I struggled to get to grips with who each character really was, and Retsy and Emerson’s relationship especially was confusing. The build up to the inciting incident felt too slow and the book only really picked up in the second half. Ebbott explored some really interesting points in the aftermath of the big incident and had some good psychological insights into the characters’ responses but I found the ending a little cynical. I think if Ebbott made his focus a little tighter, and wrote about something he really believed in, his talents would shine more. This felt a bit too self-conscious and ‘written’ for me to lose myself in it.

I can't exactly say I enjoyed Among Friends by Hal Ebbott, but at the same time I found myself compelled to keep reading as he delved deeper into the strange and strained relationships between his characters.
Amos and Emerson have been friends for decades, ever since they were students, and together with their wives and daughters they regularly get together to celebrate and commiserate life events, large and small. When something happens at a weekend get together to celebrate Emerson's birthday at his country home, the after effects ripple through both families, threatening not just the long standing friendship but marriages and family relationships too.
This is a real slow burn, at least for the first half of the book, and that combined with the largely unlikable characters almost made me set it aside, but I am so glad that I did not, because the second half of the book really had me invested, so much so that I feel like I will be thinking about this book for quite a while. The character work in the book is exception, not just in terms of the growth they go through, though that is absolutely the case for some of them, but more so in how real and rooted they feel, it is completely believable that these people have known each other for a long time, yet in some ways do not know each other at all. The various reactions to the aftermath of what happened showed great insight into both the best and worst of human nature. The ending will probably infuriate several readers, personally I wish it had been a little more defined but I know others will like the ambiguity.
I read and reviewed an ARC courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher, all opinions are my own.

Among Friends by Hal Ebbott

Amos and Emerson have been friends since they were at university together 30 years ago. They gather for a weekend to celebrate Emerson's birthday with their wives and daughters. But a shocking event threatens to unravel everything.

I raced through this book but it's testament to the author's brilliant writing that I wasn't always enjoying it! I was physically shocked by the event that happens at Emerson's birthday get-together. And the way each of the (unlikeable) characters seeks to explain, deflect, absolve themselves afterwards is repulsive. I haven't made it sound very compelling but it absolutely is! Very highly recommended.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book.

Among Friends is a refreshing read. I absolutely loved the style of the prose, there was a beautiful tone at times and then sometimes a stilled, awkward and abrupt tone. It just worked perfectly.
We follow two families who have been connected through friendship for a long time. After some events unfold some of the characters and the reader are left anticipating and pondering the mystery for sometime. I felt the exploration of friendship and how families deal with conflict was true to life and compelling to read.
The characters are generally unlikable and the conclusion is ambiguous but this is literary fiction after all.
I think this would make a great film.
Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC. This is a voluntary review of my own thoughts.

Picture a cozy autumn weekend at a New York country house. Two families, long entwined, gather for a birthday celebration. Old friendships and shared histories over decades. What could go wrong? Until suddenly, everything does.

What begins as a warm reunion unravels into a reckoning, exposing long-buried resentments simmering just beneath the surface.

For me, the ambiguous ending lingers in all the right ways - inviting reflection, sparking debate. Hal Abbot writes with quiet precision, capturing the fragility of even our closest bonds, and how quickly the ground can shift beneath us.

A strong debut - and a solid 4 stars.

Thank you to the publishers for allowing me to read an advance copy of this via NetGalley in exchange for my honest thoughts.

Emerson and Amos met and bonded three decades ago in college, and their families—wives Retsy and Claire, teenage daughters Sophie and Anna—seem happily entangled, mutually supportive. As the novel begins, they've assembled at Emerson and Retsy's country house to celebrate Emerson's 52nd birthday. But tensions simmer beneath the surface: between the men, within the marriages, even in the relationship between the daughters, which has entered the awkwardness of late adolescence and may or may not survive. In a "friendly" tennis match against Amos, Emerson suffers an ankle injury that, as a memento mori and a reminder of ancient rivalry, exacerbates the tensions both within and without. Before the weekend is over, a spontaneous act of violence and violation will threaten not only to destroy the long friendship but to jolt both families from the comfortable orbits of their privileged, on-the-surface untroubled lives. It's a prospect Claire in particular seems ill-prepared for. This is the kind of book Tom Wolfe used to write, and debut novelist Ebbott definitely has the talent and brio to carry it off. "Unflinching" is a label often applied to such works, but that word's not nearly strong enough for what happens here; this is a very smart book, but at its center is a ruthlessness that can be hard to look at. Whether that's a compliment or not may depend on the reader.

When handsome, popular Emerson and timid outsider Amos first met at university, theirs seemed an unlikely friendship, but they have been each others constant through the years, their peers noting how remarkable the longevity and enduring strength of their bond is. Their wives are friendly, their daughters have grown up together, and their calendars are punctuated by shared dinners and weekends away. Then, one October weekend, the families gather at Emerson's country house to celebrate his birthday and something happens which will test not only Emerson and Amos' relationship, but the connections between all who love them.

Loyalties are tested and characters questioned in Among Friends, the strong literary debut from new author Hal Ebbott. After the initial catalyst for the story is established, the novel is far more interested in character than in plot, and this choice allows each character - from the two male protagonists to their respective wives and daughters - the space to be written into life with nuance and subtlety. It also highlights the beauty of Ebbott's sharply observed, often poetic, prose.

Amos' daughter starkly portrays the conflict tearing her apart as she grapples with whether or not to tell her parents what Emerson did. She knows what happened was wrong and has wrecked her, but speaking out would break her father. She is angry and devastated but cannot detatch these feelings from those of admiration and affection she feels for a man she has known her whole life. How can she reconcile the assault with the afternoon they spent sealing Christmas cards or the sandwich making game he invented to delight her and his own daughter, Sophie?

Emerson is despicable. When pondering on why Anna might not have told her parents what he did, he wonders if they might not one day chat about her reasons. 'He imagined the two of them talking like old men, soldiers in the same army who've not seen each other since the end of the war.' He sees himself as a loveable rogue, more vital and charming because of his lapse in judgement and anticipated subsequent redemption. This horrid man seems tormented not by what he did to Anna (although the generous reading is that he feels so guilty that he cannot let himself think about it) but by the ramifications of his actions for himself, should Amos take his daughter's side.

Much of the interaction between the various characters is uncomfortable to read; simmering tensions underscore both of the decades-long marriages, even before the events of Emerson's birthday, every exchange seasoned by years of unspoken history and context. Retsy, Emerson's wife, who inhabits the edges of the story with sporadic but compelling vignettes, finds herself in a marriage in which she loves the stability and status it affords her more than she loves her husband. Meanwhile, Claire, Amos' wife, has her own complicated history with Emerson. Time and again, Ebbott leads his characters into situations where they must choose between the right choice and the easy choice, or between people without whom they cannot imagine their life. This is not a story of heroes and sacrifice, and it is far more interesting for it.

Ebbott unpacks the notion of belief in an individual, suggesting that we make concious decisions about who to believe when faced with different alleged truths. Among Friends suggests that believing is not an instinctive response but a choice, based on everything you know (or suspect) to be true about another person, your own experience of the world, and the carefully constructed scenery, characters and plot of your life that you can choose to preserve or destroy. I was really intrigued by the thoughts that troubled each character when they ruminated on what their friendship or marriage meant to them and what it would mean to effectively choose to end it.

The ending is equal parts frustrating and clever, and it is a testament to Ebbott's writing that I found myself impressed as much as disappointed.

Thank you to NetGalley and Pan Macmillan for the opportunity to read and review an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I must admit, I had a bit of a struggle getting into Hal Ebbot's style. However, I was intrigued enough by the story to keep going, and I'm glad I did. Among Friends is a thoughtful and intriguing book about the constraints and expectations of long standing friendships, and ultimately about what can break the bond and trust between friends. It was a great read.

At first, I kept wondering when we’d get to the action, the “shocking betrayal” the blurb promised. But the slow burn worked, and it was a good thing Ebbott didn’t drop us directly into the action. It gave us time to explore his characters, to let us understand their motivations, what makes them tick, and where their loyalties lie.

Emerson was the most complex character and perhaps the most well-written — a Jekyll and Hyde figure who could flip from charming to unbridled cruelty in an instant. His inner rage and entitlement were chilling.

The second half of the novel is a testament to Ebbott’s writing. When the truth comes out, the characters spiral — denial, rage, deflection.

I really wanted to like this one. The prose style is similar to Andre Aciman but the plot just did not move forward for most of the book. I couldn't finish it.

This is a well-written character novel. I enjoyed Ebbott's writing style overall, with the rich detail and realistic dialogue, although the novel was a bit slow to start for me. An impressive debut, I'm looking forward to more from this author.

This novel was one I was so excited to read and whilst it didn't do what I expected it to, I loved it as much as I was hoping to.

We follow four old friends and their teenage children as they get together for the weekend. Emerson and Amos met in college and are now entering middle age. They are both experiencing various feelings as they approach this next phase of life: anxiety, resentment, anger - of their changing bodies, their wives, their lives and each other. Where Amos is thoughtful and reflection, Emerson is brash and hard. The weekend starts well, as expected, with food and drinks and conversation. I loved the prose - the detail was so rich, the characters so clear and well written and the author managed to convey the weight of their shared histories right from the start. They all felt so real to me. The prose was poetic without being flowery or overdone. There was nothing unnecessary about the detail offered. It was all just brought to life so well.

It's hard to give anymore detail without spoiling anything and I really would encourage readers to not read too much about this before reading (although checking trigger warnings would be wise for some readers for sure!).

But this novel went places I just wasn't expecting it to and the result was devastating, enraging and totally shocked me. I'm still thinking about it. Would highly recommend!

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced copy of this novel.