This was a brilliant read. As soon as I started reading this book I just knew I was going to love it. Highly recommended

Liked the premise, but struggled to connect with the characters. I think it was their general unlikability.

Great read! Looking forward to reading more by this author! I highly recommend this book and author to all!

This book has been on my NG queue for a long time, and I apologize for the tardiness of my response. I no longer have access to this file due to a Kindle crash, but I think you for the opportunity to review.

I found this book to have a premise very similar to that of 13 Reasons Why. A friend commits suicide, and leaves behind a personal communication about the secrets and wrongdoing of each of the friend group. Friends and Other Lies does differ, in the fact that these former friends have all grown up. I did expect this book to be darker and more menacing, but it was still compelling enough for me to finish. Younger audiences that regularly read YA Mysteries should find this entertaining.
3 stars

*I received a review copy of this book in exchange for my honest opinion.
Thank you to Sourcebooks Landmark and Netgalley.*

Based on the synopsis, I thought this book would be a fantastic fit. Unfortunately, I struggled to connect with the characters and the storyline. Such is life. I thought it was best to set the book aside and move on. Thanks for allowing me access to an early copy.

Great story by Kaela Coble. Really fabulous story, that kept me turning the pages!! A thrilling plot, and characters.

I did like the author's writing style and may try the author again. What I didn't like was the storyline. I was expecting something a little more dark and twisty, but instead it seemed more juvenile. Would have been better labeled as a YA books.

Thank you so much for approving me for a copy of this book! Please see “note to publisher” section for my thoughts.

I just have to say this story broke my heart a couple of times. Ruby reluctantly returns to her home town for the first time in ten years for the funeral of her friend Danny. Ruby and Danny had been a part of a group they formed as childhood friends that they dubbed “the crew”. Ruby left right after high school and hasn’t seen any of the crew since that summer ten years ago. Danny’s death is a suicide and after the funeral his mom tells the crew that he has left each of them a note. They all convene at his mom’s house to receive their notes. What they discover is that Danny has written a secret that he knew about each of them on their individual notes. His goal is that they all divulge their secrets to the group. They soon realize that Danny felt very let down by his friends in the years before his death. He also states that if they fail to divulge their secrets that he has set up ways that they will be exposed. Secrets and lies are revealed throughout the book and friendships are re-evaluated. Danny’s friendships with each member of the crew and their abandonment of him are brought to light. All of the characters are well written. The story is well paced and kept my attention throughout. Some of the characters actions and decisions were disappointing and this made the book more compelling but heartbreaking. I was sorry to see this book end.

Thank you for the opportunity to read and review this titles. Unfortunately I couldn't connect with the story and didn't finish. As I didn't finish the book, I will not be reviewing. Thank you again and I look forward to reading future titles from this author. Many thanks.

I was completely addicted to this novel. I couldn’t put it down and when I did (because, you know, I have to work) I couldn’t wait to go back to it and a few days after finishing it, I am still thinking about it.

The story revolves around the Crew, a group of five friends who grew up together in Chatwick, a small town in Vermont. Ruby (from whose point of view is told most of the story), Murphy, Ally, Danny, and Emmett had known each other since they were children and had been inseparable until they turned eighteen, when they all went their separate ways after graduation, especially Ruby who left the small town to go and study in New York.

Ten years later, Ruby is still in New York where she dreams of becoming a writer and she hasn’t seen or talked to her childhood friends for ten years. But when Danny suddenly dies, she has no choice but to go back home and face her past.

After the funeral, Danny’s mother gathers the four friends to give each of them an envelope left from Danny. Inside each of them, it’s one of their secrets, a secret that Danny wants them to share with the others. But the consequences could be catastrophic for all of them.

I wouldn’t categorize this book as a mystery or crime novel, but there is a lot of rising suspense as each character tries to keep their secret hidden. The story is told mostly from Ruby’s point of view, who can be seen as the main character of the story, but there are a few interventions from other characters that make this book even more gripping. We also jump back in time, as we learn more about their friendship, the strong bond with each other, the difficult childhoods that some of them had, the drama of first loves, their use of drugs and alcohol.

I was completely captivated by Ruby and Murphy’s relationship, best friends, and maybe something more (I hope I am not giving too much away). Their evolving relationship is what kept me glued to the page and I couldn’t wait to find out more. Although I hoped for a different ending for them (again, I am hoping I am not spoilering too much), I think that the author ended the novel in a perfect way for all the characters.

FRIENDS AND OTHER LIARS is a truly compelling, fresh and engaging novel and I’d like to thank Sourcebooks for providing me with a copy of the book.

Unfortunately, this book failed to keep my interest. I found it to be quite slow and not at all what I was expecting. This wasn't my cup of tea.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for an arc in exchange for an honest review.

Friends and Other Liars was a fun read that pulled me in quickly. I loved how it flipped between the past and present point of view in order to give readers an understanding of the complex relationships formed by Ruby and her friends (also known as The Crew) and also to examine why they changed. I also loved the complex relationships between the characters, particularly between Ruby and her best friend, Murphy. This novel did an excellent job of exploring a lot of difficult issues. I look forward to reading more works from Kaela Coble. in the future. My thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for letting me read this wonderful book!

Imagine having someone from the dead spreading your secrets from the afterlife.

That's essentially what happens here, but it's far less sinister than it might sound.

A group of friends, that call themselves "the crew," grew up together--and grew apart. Well, some of them did. Ruby did.

Ruby hightailed it to NY after they graduated and hasn't spoken to the crew since. That is until, she receives a phone call letting her know Danny died--and she must come back home to attend his funeral. No cards, no flowers, but her presence.

Ruby comes back--and discovers there's more to this visit, than just mourning her friend.

I found this book to be hard to put down. Just the secrecy, the scandal--the drama, it made it very hard to put it down, and very easy to get caught up in.

I was actually in the middle of reading another book, started this one--and totally abandoned the other.

The story is very multi-layered, and very well-paced. With so many main characters, and the story being told in alternate points of view, you would think that the story would be a mess of personalities, and varying stories--but it totally works, and is very well done.

The way everything was revealed, and the secrets that came out--had me on the edge of my seat. They were all pretty scandalous for this story. It was nice to be outside of the YA genre for this one.

It's not going to blow you away with it's eloquence--or earth shattering plot--but as a whole, the story is thrilling, emotional and so very easy to read.

I'd highly recommend it.

This book was provided to me by NetGalley in exchange for a review. Don't want to give a thing away. Read this book. Now!! SO great! You won't be able to put it down!

I really enjoyed this book. I have not been able to find anything that kept my interest but this one certainly did. I look forward to reading many other books by this author!

Friends are reunited at the death of one of their own and when they all return to their small town in Vermont they are all confronted with lies from their past and the friend that is dead is ready to expose them all.

I love small town stories and I love friends returning to small town stories! I liked the concept of this book, but a few things just didn't work for me.

I expected all the lies to be revealed one after the other and expected that all of the friends from "the crew" to get time to tell their story and that wasn't the case. This book definitely revolves around Ruby and is almost solely told from her perspective. I would have loved a few more chapters told from other people and for the book to feel more balanced.

I did like that the chapters bounced from current day and then back to high school. It was fun to read about these characters (although mostly through Ruby's lens) and get their stories both in the current day and then in the past. I love reading angsty high school days and then have them reflect on them.

All in all, it was a fine read. I wanted just a bit more from it, but it did entertain. I would recommend this book to other readers, but would be maybe give them a warning or two. After finishing reading the book, I found out that it was a debut and I would say that I will definitely read another by Kaela Coble.

Ruby is returning to her hometown after ten years of absence, and not for the best of reasons. Danny, one of the youngsters that used to be a part of her group of tight-knit friends, has committed suicide, and Ruby is, however reluctantly, returning for his funeral. She knows that, the very moment she sets foot in her old town, the past will come barging back in on her life, threatening to destabilise her and upset the hard-fought future she's somehow managed to build for herself.

However much Ruby has loved her childhood and youth friends, and she has loved them dearly in all their bits of glory and their many imperfections, she is not so sure that her present stability and peace of mind, and maybe even her future, is a price worth paying for attendance to the funeral of somebody she hasn't seen in over a decade. What's more, her parting terms with Danny were hardly what she would call friendly. What's more, as Ruby looks back on her end-of-highschool days, she seems to remember only how much it all, the group and the friendships, and seemingly life at large, had already begun to crumble, under the weight of everybody's, so many secrets.

And then, there's everything else: returning home will also mean Ruby having to face up to her problematic relationship with her mother, a recovering alcoholic and bipolar sufferer. And, last but by no means least, it means she'll have to face her first love, Murphy. She knows that those are scars she took a long time to heal over -- just as she knows that reopening them is the last thing she needs.

However, Ruby is unable to ignore -- or resist -- Ally's powerful-as-usual summons. She tells herself that she'll be able to allay her guilt and to just zoom in and out of town, thus fulfilling her duty of once-friend to Danny and "the crew". But things are never as easy as they're supposed to be and, for Ruby and the other members of the crew, they are about to get considerably complicated... if not completely out of hand.

The funeral finally out of the way, the five friends and their partners are told that they should attend a reading of Danny's last words, in the form of a bitter letter where he accuses them of not caring, of abandoning him and the promise they had once made to always love and be there for one another, and to always be truthful to each other. They have been, Danny tells them, keeping secrets and telling lies, and it was about time somebody put a stop to all that.

He, Danny, will be the person to do that, even from beyond the grave. And the way he proposes to do it is by leaving a series of blackmail letters to be delivered to each of his estranged friends, threatening to out their biggest secret if they don't confide in each other. But not even Danny is as perfect and infallible as he seems to have thought he was, and his little from-the-grave caper threatens to derail everybody else's life, as he himself lies (or gets confused, we will never really know) about one of the secrets (was he trying to exact yet another revenge on another of his long lost friends?), messing up what he had perhaps wished would be a perfect plan.

the verdict:

I really enjoyed reading Friends & Other Liars. I don't read women's fiction very often, though I do try to keep a toe in the genre, as I do with most. This title strikes me as a little safe. Ms Coble could have made it into a full blown, atmospherically dark and psychologically charged, near-noir plot -- but then it would have been a different book altogether. Did I expect it to be darker? Or did I merely expect it to be something else? I'm not sure, at this point.

I've just been through a spell of reading quite dark thrillers, and even though I initially jarred with this title because it was obviously so different of what I had been reading, I soon got into it and was hooked. What I now know, a few days after having read it, is that as it is, Friends & Other Liars is a nice, very well written, balanced little book, a bit mystery, a bit love story, a bit coming-of-age, even a bit Young Adult, and a whole lot of story.

The characters are just fleshy enough to feel real and to trigger, in the readers, feelings of identification, sympathy or animosity. We recognise them all, can almost see them walk, alive and full formed, out from our tweens and teens memories.

Ruby is a bit of the girl we all were, feisty and dependable but also insecure and already a bit messed up by life; Ally is a bit of the girl we all wished we had been, taking charge, always seemingly there and on it. Danny is the wreck we all knew at least one example of, whom we hated to love because, well, he was one of us but it was just so messy in every way possible. And Murphy is the absolute cad our grandmothers warned us about, the a-little-despicable-but-lovable rogue, a bit loose on the morals, self-centred and egotistical, sex-on-legs, "committophobic" bad boy who uses and discards women, and who can only mean heartache of the most serious kind if we ever get entangled with them.

True to form, Murphy treats Ruby appallingly. And even though I understand why Ruby still lingers in his shade, I hate it that she takes it from him. I wanted her to be a stronger woman already upon her return to Chatwick, and to realise that relationships do not change men. But how can she, when she's still so broken and so young?

Plot-wise, this book is nothing new or that ground breaking, but it is still an interesting and well developed plot, based on the interplay between secrets, disclosure and privacy, and lies and ommissions, oscillating between the 'then' and the 'now' and told from the perpectives of the various friends of 'the crew'. The 'then' chapters tell, quite obviously, the story of how the group came about and how the relationships were forged and evolved over the years; and though there are flashbacks, the 'now' mostly tells the story of Danny's suicide, his funeral and aftermath, and then developing the blackmail plot.

Perhaps because it is so simple in execution, and because it tells a story that speaks to most of us making us revisit a particular time of our past that seems to remain significantly embeded in the tissues of our personalities, the story and the characters of Friends  & Other Liars acquire a quite vivid and memorable dimension, and seem to stay with us long after we're done turning the pages. I know it stayed with me: I've read quite a few titles since, and I can honestly say I'm struggling to remember a few -- but Friends & Other Liars is still fresh with me, as if I was still reading it, and that is, surely, one of the things that matter most in a book.

I feel that if it had been marketed as a Literary Fiction book, Friends & Other Liars would not attract that high a rating, competing as it would be with much more accomplished and groundbreaking novels. On the other hand, Young Adult would have been a far too wide category for it, and may even have risen some eyebrows. Cleverly marketed as it is as General/Women's Fiction title, I feel it deservedly garners its four little stars.

First I'd like to start with Kaela Coble can write and write very well at that. So why the 2 star rating? Because I expected something different than what this book was and that's on me, not the author. I expected a dark, juicy, twisted tale and this is NOT that book. This read very much like a young adult novel to me and I found myself rolling my eyes at all the teen like angst coming off the page. Maybe I just wasn't in the right mind set to read this.

Danny dies of a drug overdose which reconnects the "Crew" for his funeral. Every member of this Crew have secrets that they keep from one another and Danny, beyond the grave, wants to expose each and every one of them. He leaves letters for his mother to find and each one is addressed to each member of the crew. Personally, I think Danny is a huge a-hole for doing this. Some friend you are. I didn't connect to any of the characters Ruby, Murphy, Emmitt, or Ally.

All in all this was a miss for me but I will still seek out future work from this author.

Thank you to NetGalley and Sourcebooks for providing me with a digital ARC in exchange for my honest review.