I had high hopes for Elizabeth Ames' debut novel, The Other's Gold. The premise, intriguing cover art, and tie in to the familiar Girl Scouts song all had me eager to read this book. Unfortunately, my excitement for this literary novel didn't extend much further than that. In all, I found The Other's Gold to be entirely too long-winded, meandering, muddled, and although I hate to say it ... boring.

Ames' writing style in The Other's Gold was instantly off-putting. Told as if from a distance, there is an immediate wedge put between the reader and the characters. In a novel that tries to be intimate, this is a big fail, as it was impossible to feel close or connected to any of the novel's four main characters. The many characters also added confusion, which is another downfall of this book. The narration skips from character to character without any notification other than the mention of their name in a sentence. If you aren't paying close attention, you can easily lose track of whose story you are reading. Lastly, the plot line of The Other's Gold is just not compelling. Sure, on the surface it appears to be an interesting, engaging read, but once you dig in, you find that this novel is just a bunch of drivel.

Sadly, this book was just not for me.

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Group Viking for an ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

Give me a story about female friendship AND have it include a college campus theme and I am sold. (I also love the title of this book and gets me nostalgic for that childhood song.) While the beginning was slow, about a third of the way through I started to feel invested and eager to see what happened. The characters felt real and relatable, and Ames writing was clever and absorbing.

While I generally love a campus novel, this one did not capture my attention. I found the writing slow and I was unmotivated to pick it up.

The description of this book sounded amazing. Four women who are roommates best friends from freshman year of college into their adult years, while navigating challenges and mistakes they make along the way. It could have been so good, but it was not. First of all, the four women are so thinly constructed they are indistinguishable from one another.All privileged , some just more than others. I constantly had to remind myself who was who. Most disappointing, perhaps, is that none of them ever seem to face any consequences for the some times horrendous choices they make.. They do awful things and life just continues to go on for them.
Finally, the final part of the story was just so WTAF, actually unbelievable that I couldn’t get past it. Again; the woman faces no consequences for a terrible awful thing she did.

The Other's Gold is must-read, absolutely triumphant debut novel by a major new literary voice. Narrated in spectacular prose with breathtaking emotional intimacy and insight, Ames' big-hearted, character-driven book left me in awe. Simultaneously funny and heartbreaking, joyous and mournful, hopeful and devastating, this profoundly honest exploration of friendship, family, endurance, and forgiveness chronicles the lives four unforgettable female friends: Alice, Lainey, Ji Sun, and Margaret. I loved this book and can't highly recommend it enough!

Unfortunately I didn’t find any of the characters likable and found the story to be uninteresting and long winded.

I had a difficult time identifying with any of these characters. Perhaps it was because I was reading about their questionable choices before I was given a chance to know them fully.

I was about 150 pages into this book and not able to finish. Ultimately, I moved on. The writing is beautiful-but the pace of the story didn’t resonate.

Each person in a group of four college roommates makes a mistake and then become new parents later in life. This book about Lainey, Ji Sun, Alice and Margaret follows them through ups and downs as they navigate life through thick and thin.

I was so disappointed in this book. Who doesn’t love a book about four female friends, forming a bond as college roommates? I just didn’t care for any of the characters, and their world. Sorry, but thanks to Netgalley for the ARC.

{My Thoughts}
I love well written stories of friendships formed at a young age that go on to survive the test of time, even as they change and grow. The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer and The Ensemble by Aja Gabel (my review) are two that immediately come to mind, but there have been many more. Now, The Other’s Gold by Elizabeth Ames joins that list.

Alice, Margaret, Ji Sun, and Lainey meet in 2002 when purely by chance all are assigned to the same suite at the start of their freshmen year at Quincy-Hawthorne College. The four very different girls have an immediate connection and intense loyalty that never really waivers.

“But that night, outside the confines of their common room, there were no others. They considered only their roommates, and each one fell asleep to find the other three already waiting in her dreams.”

Even after college as they scatter and chase different careers the four work at staying in touch, supporting each other, and finding ways to spend time together, but The Other’s Gold is much more than the simple tale of friendship I’ve described so far.

The four sections in Ames’ debut each center around “the” big mistake in each woman’s life. The first happened long before the four met at Quincy-Hawthorne and the last long after they left. Some mistakes were bigger than others, some harder to understand, some more challenging to forgive, but what shone for me was that these women supported each other even when disappointed and even hurt by the actions of their friends.

“That’s who they were to one another – the ones willing to reach without dwelling on the risk. The ones who would enter the room when it reeked of despair. The ones who would not turn away.”

I flew through The Other’s Gold, enjoying both the story and the writing. Ames went places with her characters that were both usual and completely unexpected, always keeping me wanting more. The last section got a little repetitive and might have been more tightly edited, but that was the book’s only minor flaw. My reading this summer has been stellar and The Other’s Gold continues the trend!

THE OTHER'S GOLD by Elizabeth Ames is a debut novel about four women who meet as college roommates in the fall of 2002. I think that the cover is beautiful and eye-catching – absolutely representing the intertwining of life events for Lainey, Ji Sun, Margaret and Alice. All second daughters, they represent different backgrounds and issues, respectively: a focused student and activist who is mixed race and adopted, an extremely rich young woman with Asian heritage, an unusually beautiful girl who struggles academically, and a troubled athlete who is dealing with her brother's limitations and her parents' rejection. Ames promises that their dorm "window seat was practice, then, for benches upon which they'd later huddle: in the antechamber of the dean's office; in hospital waiting rooms; in the parking lot outside the psych ward, gathering the courage to face their friend." I was (perhaps naively) hoping for a slightly older version of Ann Brashares' Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants or maybe a more contemporary take than Mary McCarthy's The Group, both of which have appealed to teen readers. However, THE OTHER'S GOLD starts slowly and, in my opinion, never really builds strong empathy for the characters so it is difficult to care about their feelings as they face ethical dilemmas and make poor choices. If you are looking for a novel about the bonds of friendship, try one of those mentioned or the more recently published The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai.

Very well done story about friends who meet in college and stay together through various challenges. Interesting characters, some really nice writing. A new writer to watch.

Tweeted it out at ‪https://mobile.twitter.com/megwclayton/status/1167985992457838595‬ — which your link thing doesn’t want to accept, so...

I featured this book on my blog and will provide more details directly to the publisher in the next round of this process.

I received this title courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are given freely and are my own.

The Other’s Gold follows freshmen suitemates Lainey, Ji Sun, Alice, and Margaret from freshmen year through adulthood, as they grow up, bonding, making mistakes, sharing secrets (or not, in some cases) through the complexities that make up life.

This book had everything that I normally love: Strong female characters, love, friendship, rotating narration. I wanted to love it. I should have loved it. But, it fell just short. I found that I had to push myself through a type of novel that ordinarily I would have sailed through in a matter of hours. The novel was well written and certainly the author has incredible talent! But, the plot was missing a touch of energy to keep me engaged.

This book was good, it was fine. It was definitely well written. I just had trouble getting into it. Not enough happened, perhaps, or it was just kind of boring? But the author is clearly very talented- I just wish the story had been more engaging.

I just finished The Other’s Gold and Elizabeth Ames just took me on quite the journey! This captivating novel was a sort of coming-of-age read centering around 4 girls who meet as college freshman. Elizabeth Ames does a great job of following the ladies through the college years and beyond. Each of the four have their own story to tell and own experiences that ultimately shapes them. I really enjoyed how thoroughly we get to know all of the women both independently as well as who they are (and the role they take on) in the friend group. I found myself reflecting on the bonds I made my freshman year of college — I always love a book that makes you think! I read this novel on a long flight and although I had the option to watch the latest Netflix show I had downloaded on my iPad or the tv/movie selection that was offered, I found myself glued to my kindle because I couldn’t put the characters and storyline out of my head and needed to find out where this novel would take them! I look forward to reading more from Elizabeth Ames!

Despite the fact that this is the type of novel that I generally like, I found this book very disappointing. Again, four college roommates bond and become lifelong friends. The women go through college traumas, marriage and motherhood maintaining this relationship.

The characters represented a carefully curated group, even to their diversity of background and hair color. All of this managed to feel very contrived. It seemed like the author found inspiration in books such as THE GROUP, but fell short.

However, the author tends to plod along and focus endlessly on a few incidents. I found the book very formulaic and predictable. I understand the use of foreshadowing, but readers don’t have to be hit over the head to see where some of the characters are going. I found the relationships rather unbelievable and I was left with a lack of closure.

So, I found this novel didn’t live up to my expectations.

When they are assigned to the same suite as freshmen at a small college, Lainey, Ji Sun, Margaret, and Alice forge an instant bond, which this book follows through college and beyond, focusing on some major turning points in their lives. The prologue mentions how each girl has made one terrible mistake in their life; the book is divided up into sections according to this - the accident, the accusation, the kiss, and the bite - and explores how the bonds of friendship might be strengthened, tested, and changed throughout these turning points and as they grow older, become mothers, etc. This book reminded me a lot of Meg Wolitzer's The Female Persuasion in terms of pacing and tone, but also in terms of this look at female friendship and how it can develop so strongly in college and then shift and change as women age, along with examining how women come to their feminist perspectives and how those also change with age and life experience. Also like The Female Persuasion, it tells of various episodes throughout their friendships, with a pretty character-driven approach. Moved a little slowly for me at times, but that's mostly because I love plot-driven stuff. I think it's well done from the character perspective though; these girls all felt like very real people to me by the end.

This is really my kind of book---a friendship between four women that starts in college and moves forward from there. Ames does a good job getting the reader (at least this reader) to care about all four characters and feel like we know them. Thank you netgalley.com for the advance copy.