Necessary People by Anna Pitoniak

This was a fun read, that I had to hurry up and read to its conclusion, so I could see where the author was taking the main character Violet.

Violet from the wrong side of the tracks meets well off socialite Stella at college and they fast become toxic friends. The friendship is “love hate” and nerve wracking. After college, Violet is doing very well working at a cable news station while Stella travels the world. When Stella returns home and learns her “friend” is doing well at her job, she gets a job at the same station and basically, all hell breaks loose. But not in a way you would imagine and what makes this a great read.

This was a dark read but the author did a great job of telling a story that stayed with me long after the last page. She deals with privilege and friendships, all while developing characters that I sometimes learned to dislike. I must say it started out a bit slow, but stay with it, you will not regret.

Rating 4
Linda C

3.5/5: such a gripping book!! while i totally expected a different ending, i love that it didn’t end super rosy and that violet’s self-determination and hyper-focused ambition won out over romance or prison

Got an advance copy of Necessary People from NetGalley- thanks, friends!

This book is a solid novel- I would have given it five stars but the ending was a touch too predictable for me. Almost like a Devil Wears Prada situation- awful boss, clueless girl, shitty boyfriend...kind of sort of finds herself in the end....a touch predictable and almost like the author was trying to hard to find the “edge” of her character. What makes this one good is that it doesn’t do TOO much. You know the books - that the girl gets lost, the husband dies, someone murders someone, then there’s a pregnancy AND THEN the house burns down? That’s too much. This? This has just the right amount of drama and intrigue…it just needed a bit more development and strong character. Give us a main that is likeable, strong and not so clueless, please!

Anyway- good for book clubs, reading while your kid is asleep in a hotel room, or just to generally pass the time. Not really intense in any way!

So, I finished NECESSARY PEOPLE by Anna Pitoniak ( @annapitoniak ) the other night and I loved it! I finished it less than 24 hours because I could not put it down! I just had to know what happened next.

As an initial matter, I must say, this is not the story of an “ordinary”, “typical”, or “normal” female friendship. In my opinion, this is the story of a relationship fueled by obsession, jealously, and insecurity. It starts innocently enough. The beautiful and wealthy Stella, and the mousey and poor Violet meet while touring a second tier yet prestigious private east coast college. Violet, enamored with Stella, forgoes her full ride to Duke and follows Stella’s path instead. They become roommates and “best friends”.

But truly, Violet is just obsessed with Stella and her life. How vastly different it is from hers. She will do anything for Stella. Dare I say she is in love with Stella? And Stella revels in it.
Stella craves attention.

After college Violet lands a great job at an up and coming cable news station, KCN. Stella travels the world. But when Stella returns, it is clear she does not like the attention Violet is getting by way of her rapid ascent at KCN. So, Stella uses her family connections to get an internship at KCN. And y’all, this is when the battle begins.

Violet is beyond ambitious. Stella has that “it-factor” that makes one a star and she will use all of her family’s power to make it. In Violet’s mind there is only room for one of them to succeed at KCN. There are twists, turns, backstabbing, and manipulations that keep the pages turning.

I give it ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5!

I wanted to like this book. It fell flat, very flat. Maybe if the book had been shorter, it would have popped. The beginning of the book was a good read, but the last part of the book was just boring. Thanks to NetGalley, the author and the publisher for the arc of this book in return for my honest review. Receiving this book in this manner had no bearing on this review.

I am sorry for not reviewing fully but I don’t have the time to read this at the moment. I believe that it wouldn't benefit you as a publisher or your book if I only skimmed it and wrote a rushed review. Again, I am sorry for not fully reviewing!

This was a quick entertaining read that focused on pseudo-friendship, jealousy and ultimate betrayal. I really liked the made character and especially enjoyed the ending.

Thank you to Netgalley and Little Brown for a copy of this book! I enjoyed Necessary People by Anna Pitnoiak. Lots of fun twists and turns and full of suspense. Stella and Violet were fascinating characters.

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Stella and Violet are best friends, and from the moment they met in college, they knew their roles. Beautiful, privileged, and reckless Stella lives in the spotlight. Hardworking, laser-focused Violet stays behind the scenes, always ready to clean up the mess that Stella inevitably leaves in her wake.
After graduation, Violet moves to New York and lands a job in cable news, where she works her way up from intern to assistant to producer, and to a life where she's finally free from Stella's shadow. In this fast-paced world, Violet thrives, and her ambitions grow -- but everything is jeopardized when Stella, envious of Violet's new life, uses her connections, beauty, and charisma to get hired at the same network. Stella soon moves in front of the camera, becoming the public face of the stories that Violet has worked tirelessly to produce -- and taking all the credit.
Stella might be the one with the rich family and the right friends, but Violet isn't giving up so easily. As she and Stella strive for success, each reveals just how far she'll go to get what she wants -- even if it means destroying the other person along the way.

Being enrolled at the same college, and wearing the same tennis shoes at the moment of their encounter, was the only touchpoint for Violet Trapp and Stella Bradley. Apart from that, they could not be more different. Violet is an ordinary girl from the wrong side of the tracks. Attending this prestigious college on scholarship was her way out from a small town in Florida and a dysfunctional family with an alcoholic father and an abusive mother. Stella, on the other hand, is a beautiful, pampered, attractive, funny and filthy rich girl from New York high society.

A few weeks after they meet, Stella decides that she wants to be Violet’s roommate. And what Stella wants, Stella gets. This is how their friendship started, which endured through all four years.

After graduation, Stella decides to travel and have some fun. Violet moves to New York, where she lives in Stella's parents' apartment while pursuing a career as the producer of cable news. At one point, Stella returns to New York, a bit lost but persistent in continuing her lifestyle of having fun and not doing much. But regardless of her spoiled-brat image, Stella is just as ambitious as Violet. The last thing she can bear is to have her plain, simple friend be more successful than she is. And so, little by little, their friendship begins to erode.

Full review available at: <a href="https://www.bookreporter.com/reviews/necessary-people">Bookreporter</a>

This book left me on the edge of my seat and then some! I devoured this book in just 2 sittings. I thoroughly enjoyed the mystery as well as the characters and I cannot wait to read what Anna Pitoniak puts out next!

I couldn’t stand reading any more about Violet’s work. Stella hadn’t shown up in the newsroom by the 30% point, so there was no conflict or suspense or anything else interesting going on so I abandoned the book. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

This book really surprised me. It’s a story we’ve all read before. Poor girl meets rich girl, rich girl befriends poor girl. Poor girl becomes obsessed with rich girl, rich girl treats poor girl like trash because she can. BOOM sudden tragedy!
I didn’t root for either character because neither was a decent human, but that didn’t stop me from frantically reading for hours just to find out what happened. A month after reading this book and I’m still thinking about it.
Plus I’m a sucker for a character who works at a news station. Idk why.

Ambitious women for the win! This book is all about them. The dynamics between two best friends, Stella and Violet, draws readers in. While rooting for Violet, I was also wanted to understand more and more of Stella.
Pitoniak does an amazing job dynamic characters in so much passion and ambition in everything that they do. Both strive to achieve great things, both want the world. However, it seems one may be jealous of all the things that come so easily to the other. It makes the friendship almost seem inevitable to fail.

I loved this book! It left me with wanting to know more and more with every page.

This was an impulse read from Book of the Month Club. While I really enjoyed The Futures, I didn't realize until I was done this that it was the same author and it came as no surprise since there was a similarly compelling plot and absorbing story. It was a perfect vacation read, I finished it in two days. More of a thriller than I usually go for but a very interesting look at female friendships, competition and "frenemies," class differences and how they're navigated in friendships, and Behind-the Scenes of TV News.

Wow what a book!!!

Oh my goodness... that was pretty intense. Just how I like my novels... dark, intense, and full of gossip and juice :).

Women sometimes actually scare me haha... even though clearly I'm one myself. But, I know how we can get sometimes especially with our friends. Talk about a friendship that turns toxic over time. The characters were complex, complicated, and took just the right dark turns that I long for.

I definitely would recommend putting this one on your radar if you love dark books.

Overall, 4 stars!

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

Now available!!

I received a Digital Advance Reader Copy of this book from #NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I loved this book. A fresh take on a toxic friendship with two main characters who had more layers that I often see in books taking on this topic. In lieu of an obsession with characters losing themselves in each other, the majority of the story focused on the attempts at disentangling from a friendship that has become stifling, which most writers reserve for the third act. This allowed the author to explore the protagonist outside of the friendship instead of making the friendship the entire story. An amazing debut.

Necessary People by Anna Pitoniak was, in a word, unputdownable. It was dark and twisty with morally gray characters making morally gray decisions. I loved it!

Violet and Stella are best friends from college. Stella is rich and beautiful, and Violet is hardworking and lives in Stella’s shadow. After landing her dream job, Violet’s ambition is awakened and she works hard to maintain her momentum up the ladder at work. Stella then jeopardizes Violet’s spot at work and Violet is determined to not let her win this time.

This dark and twisty tale of friendship, ambition, betrayal, and money was unputdownable. When I first started reading it I thought, here we go, just another book of friendship and betrayal; but boy was I wrong. This was such a page-turner. It was written with suspense in mind. I just wanted to see what was going to happened next and the ending was unpredictable.

I received a review copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley for my honest review. Opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own.

I was really excited to read this one—I was hoping it would be a juicy story about a friendship gone awry. Overall it was... but it was just missing something for me. It took me a while to get into it and then it just sort of ended quickly.

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC!

College friends become professional rivals in this gripping, tense novel by Pitoniak. Notable here is the surprising pivot that Pitoniak takes about two-thirds of the way through the novel. In a lesser writer's hands, this twist might have seemed preposterous, but here it works because the characters - and the stakes- are so compelling. I couldn't put this one down, and I kept turning pages long into the night. This is thrilling, scary stuff about ambition and female friendships and the darkness inside all of us. It's escapism, sure, but this was a hell of a fun escape.

Super dark, super fun, and super worth readers' time.

So many females experience completion in their friendships. This book was a joy to read and I loved all of the relationship dynamics that are explored.