A wonderful story of the bonds between women. This book took me back to my own enduring friendships, and what I would and wouldn't do to keep them.
Fun and crazy funny.

I love this story because even though I've read many stories about friendships, this structure was unique and set it apart from other books based on friendship. I love the world news in the chapters and how those events effected the lives of the women in the story. It held my attention to the very last page.

Sophie, Melissa, Amy and Emma met at university and became best friends.  This book follows their journey throughout the years after their graduation.

I really enjoyed this book.  I initially thought I would give it 4 stars, but the plot twist at about 80% shook me!! 

I highly recommend this book if you love stories about women and friendships.

Thank you NetGalley and publisher for providing a free copy of this book.

Title...The Story Of Our Lives

Author...Helen Warner

My " in a nutshell" summary...

Four women...who met as young women in college...try to spend at least one weekend a year at a “weekend getaway”.  Sophie, Melissa, Emily and Amy each have their own secrets and heartaches.  Their time together helps them to see their lives more clearly in a sort of unfiltered way.  They each also have various strengths and weaknesses as they live out their very different lives. Their getaway is special but they do live in close proximity to each other so it’s easy for them to stay in touch and be there for each other when needed.  

My thoughts after reading this book...

I really enjoyed this book.  There was enough drama to really hold my interest.  Amy had husband issues, Sophie had husband issues, Emily and Melissa had lack of husband issues.  

What I loved about this book...

I really did love the way the writer told this story.  It was very readable.  The issues seemed viable.  Some things were a bit predictable but that didn’t really bother me.  I didn’t really want to put this book away.  We just happened to have a huge wind storm and power outage while I was reading this book.  This book made the hours in the outage fly! 

Final thoughts...
Would this be a good choice for you...potential reader?

Readers who love books with lots of issues and a ton of dysfunction should enjoy this    book...I did!  

I received  an advance reader’s copy of this  book from the publisher through NetGalley and Amazon.  It was my choice to read it and review it.

Sophie, Melissa, Amy, and Emily meet their first year as university students in London and establish a friendship that endures across two decades as they grow from girls to mature women, sharing their lives and supporting one another through triumphs and tragedies, through life with good men and with jerks and worse. As is common in women’s fiction—and perhaps to some degree in life--each character is a distinct type. Sophie, the center of the group, meets the love of her life at an early age, enjoys success in her career, and is the most stable of the foursome. Melissa, the child of divorced parents who have second families, is a lost girl and something of a wild child. Amy begins as an effervescent optimist and seems set for a fairy-tale life when she marries a rich, handsome, devoted man, but the darkness beneath the perfect surface almost destroys her. Emily, the most intellectual and the most reserved, becomes pregnant just before she graduates. The identity of her son’s father remains a secret until late in the novel.

The story opens in 1997 when the women, twenty-five at the time, gather for a girls’ weekend. Sophie, living with the boyfriend whom she met the same year she met the other women, is excited about her career in television production but is wondering if steady Steve, who seems boring when compared to her male colleagues, is really right for her. Melissa, who works in the music industry, is drinking too much and hooking up indiscriminately. Amy has met her Prince Charming and announces her engagement. Emily is a devoted mother, rearing her young son Jack alone, with help from her loving parents.

Over the next fifteen years, the friends share each other’s lives through marriages, motherhood, postpartum depression, miscarriage, infidelity, addiction, and domestic abuse. Their annual reunion is sacrosanct, and as they grow more affluent, so do the sites where they gather. Their holidays include time in Ireland, Sophie’s native soil, and Los Angeles, where Melissa’s work takes her. Their love can be tough when necessary; they band together to call Melissa on her self-destructive habits and to save Amy from the marriage that is destroying her. But when another looming tragedy forces Emily to reveal her son’s father at last, the truth may shatter the bonds of their long friendship.

The Story of Our Lives is a well-written novel that falls somewhere between chick lit and women’s fiction, probably closer to the former. Sophie, Melissa, Amy, and Emily are flawed but generally likeable characters. Their romantic lives are a substantial enough part of their story that romance readers will likely enjoy the book. I found Sophie the most appealing of the four friends, and I adored her boyfriend, later husband Steve, a classic beta hero. And the ending will certainly please romance readers. Warner prefaces each chapter with a snippet of headline news from the real world, a strategy that allows the reader to see the lives of the four women within the contexts of a larger world of tragedy, scandal, and hope.

If you like chick lit/ women’s fiction, particularly with an English accent, I think you will find this book a rewarding, entertaining read.

One of my favourite genres of fiction is one that is focused on friendship groups. I love the love of romantic fiction but there is something special about the friendship between women. It can be both a curse and a cause for celebration and that is exactly what Helen Warner examines in her novel The Story of Our Lives.

The Story of Our Lives focuses on the friendship group Sophie, Emily, Amy and Melissa and how their friendship group grows, alters, falls apart and falls back together again over the course of a few decades. Warner throws massive curve balls at her readers throughout the novel and pulls the rug from under your feet far too many times. With several ‘shocked face’ moments and me screaming at the book several times I can honestly say that The Story of Our Lives put me through the emotional ringer.

The Story of Our Lives by Helen Warner is available now.

So you have four girlfriends whomeet up every year on August 31, which happens to be the anniversary of Princess Diana's death. Each has some sort of secret, and each has to learn some lessons.

This is about change and how you adapt to it, both individually and as friends. It's about what keeps friendships going, twenty years on. Not all of these women are good friends to each other, at least not all of the time. Mistakes are made. reckoning is demanded. Can you stay friends with someone you think betrayed you?

This is a pleasant read, if not entirely memorable. I can't quite see the comparisons to Big Little Lies, though. There really isn't a big fat mystery in this book, aside from the parentage of the child of one of the women. I'm also not quite sure I would compare this to One Day. In format, yes. In style and substance, no.

If you want to lose yourself in some chick lit for a few hours, you might want to think about this one.

Sophie, Amy, Emily and Melissa have shared everything since childhood. Their marriages, their hopes and dreams, their disappointments. But things start spiralling out of control in each of their lives. When they meet for their annual vacation get-together, things come to a head. Could a long-buried secret rip their friendship apart? Or make them stronger? A wonderful read.

No woman in this world would be able to survive without the constant support and cheer from her girlfriends who are always present whenever you need a comforting hug or to listen to soothing words or just to unburden yourself. ‘The Story of Our Lives’ by Helen Warner is a tribute to that friendship that is inevitable in our lives.  I bet every woman out there can identify with the premise of this novel as who doesn’t have that group of tight knit friends who, though might be far apart in terms of distance, are so close to our hearts that we feel their support and love every day in our life. The book reminded me of my best friends from college and how our friendship grew and strengthened through the various experiences we shared and survived.

‘The Story of Our Lives’ traces the life of four friends – Sophie, Emily, Amy and Melissa – who are friends from college and still meet each other at least once in a year. As each of them go through various low phases in their lives that shake their marriage, profession and even their relationships with each other, they still find comfort and solace in one another. However, is their friendship strong enough to withstand all the challenges thrown in its way?

The book is designed in a way such that each chapter happens at least a year apart when the friends meet up for a casual getaway or for celebrating certain milestone in each other’s life. However, we do not feel any gaps in the story even with this form of narration as Helen Warner goes through the important events of each characters’ life. The characters of Sophie, Emily, Amy and Melissa are all strong women trying to mark their place the world and work towards achieving their goals. The characters are well developed with each having their own strengths and weaknesses. Also, the author has managed to realistically capture the group dynamics of the quartet as we can see that there is a varying level of comfort between each of the friends.  Through the lives of these friends, Helen Warner has portrayed various sensitive issues that are plaguing the modern woman ranging from single parents to post-partum depression and even domestic abuse. Kudos to the author for maturely handling these sensitive issues and showing to the readers how important roles other women play in elevating the victims of these problems.

Although all the characters are given importance, it is obvious that the author is more drawn towards the character of Sophie as she shines through the entire novel as a beacon of understanding and compassion. Emily is portrayed as aloof but stubborn and strong whereas Amy is feminine and caring. Melissa has been portrayed as the wild sheep of the group with her carefree life and acerbic tongue. Each characters are given their own mountains to conquer with it serving as an opportunity for the characters to grow. However, towards the end, I was a little disappointed as I felt the novel ended abruptly without giving much information regarding Amy and Emily. The novel also brandishes a big mystery towards the end that might shake the foundation of the friendship. However this mystery is easy to fathom and will not take the readers by surprise.

Overall, I would rate this book as a must read for all women just to understand the experiences related in the book and to enjoy the wonderful friendship etched across its pages. This is a great book to be shared among your girls group if all your friends are into reading. I would like to credit Helen Warner in writing this beautiful book of female solidarity when the whole world is showcasing women as malicious and spiteful to each other.

The description made me look forward to complicated, multidimensional, interesting characters but I was disappointed to feel nothing for these characters. There was a wall between this reader and any depth the author may have intended

This is an honest story of the bonds of long term friendship and how much secrets can hurt. Emily, Sophie, Amy and Melissa meet every year after college at a different rented house to share how they are doing and catch up with each others. They are all very close until some secrets might very well tear them apart for good. 
I adored this book and honesty could not wait to gush about it. The story gives each woman's story as they get ready for their once a year get together. The story is told from each woman's perspective and it was very easy for this reader to fall in love with all four woman. Through their trials and heartache, the author gives us an endearing account of each woman's story and how ultimately all the stories intertwine to make one hell of a book.

Friendship through thick and thin, promises and betrayals, as this story portrays the growth of Emily, Sophie, Amy and Melissa through the years.  Four different women, the friends enjoy an annual trip where they renew their friendship, as well as share the joys and pain in their lives.  Each chapter begins in a new year, then flashes back to a particular event or time.  I loved it, and recommend for readers of women's fiction.

I absolutely loved this book, it had me hooked from the beginning - a tale of 4 friends, spanning their younger, carefree, child-free, single days, right up to their forties. I loved how the friends always meet up, albeit sometimes a year (or more) has passed, reminded me so much of some of my groups of friends - no matter how much time has gone by, you share so much that it feels like no time at all since you last seen each other. The author captured this perfectly with these characters, each one totally different, yet they are all intrinsically linked in many ways. This is my first Helen Warner book, but it certainly won't be my last. She dictated each chapter beginning with a historic moment in time, which was a lovely touch as you can think back to where you were around that time and really get a sense of how things were in the world at that time, and understand how much time had passed between the girls catching up. The relationship between the girls was lovely. They have a real true friendship, despite this being tested by many hiccups along the way.... I liked every character, mainly centered around Sophie, who is completely relatable and has her own demons, however, to everyone on the outside she seems to have it all.... Melissa, ever-so-messed up but likable all the same and her heart is in the right place, she just needs her friends to pull her through. Then there's Amy, a tender, vulnerable character who certainly has the hardest time of all of the friends, but boy do they stand by her. And Emily, with her precious son, the quietest of the group, not giving much away at all, but always being there when she is needed. This book is not just any chick lit story though - don't be fooled, there were a few twists along the way and one huge twist I for one did not see coming (and I like to think I usually do!) I really did say "wow!" out loud at one point..... a beautiful story, full of laughter, tears, sadness, and happiness. One of those books where the characters stay with you for a long time. Look forward to the next book by Helen Warner and thank you to NetGalley for the ARC.

The story of our lives by Helen Warner, is an enthralling look at the relationship between 4 friends.  Their friendship begins in college and spans the ensuing years.  Complete with love, marriage, and all the drama of living life side by side, this book will appeal to readers who enjoy a storyline that passes over years.

Review will be published on Goodreads
Run date: 9/5/2017

The Story of Our Lives is a raw, emotional, and unputdownable book! I have not had the pleasure of reading anything by Helen Warner but this book was truly such a gem. 

Emily, Amy, Melissa, and Sophie have been best friends since they were little girls. They have been there for one another through thick and thin. Like the dirtiest of the gunk... lol. I was truly inspired by the friendship that these women have and it made me miss having friends like this of my own!

What I truly enjoyed most about this book is how well the author develops her characters. Each of the women are presented with different struggles pertaining to their lives and how this may affect their friendship. Melissa, Emily, Sophie, and Amy each have their own demons and skeletons in their closet (like everyone does)... but there is one secret that may threaten the 20 year friendship and tear them apart.....

 Helen does an amazing job of showing how life can take a turn at any moment and there are SOOO many ups and downs to life. Helen had me all over with this emotional roller coaster (but in a good way). I was laughing, angry, happy, and even a little teary eyed at the end. I devoured this book in two days. Definitely one that you need to put on your radar :). I was truly inspired by this book. Loved it! 

4.5 beautiful inspiring stars!