was fortunate to receive an ARC of J. Courtney Sullivan’s latest book, Friends and Strangers. I’m a big fan of Sullivan’s earlier works and this one doesn’t disappoint. It’s a powerful story of friendships, women, society, families, love, marriage and the overlapping communities that exist among all these relationships. Elisabeth, a respected author, has just moved from Brooklyn to a small college town where her husband grew up. Approaching middle age and after IVF they are parents to an infant son. Adrift and needing to start on a third book, she hires Sam, a college student, to babysit. Both are a little star struck with the other’s familial relationships and lives. And the friendship develops into more than an employer/ employee relationship. But cracks and deception creep into the picture creating a hard to out down story that will deeply resonate with the reader. Loved this one.

Friends and Strangers dwells on many topics of interest and debate in our society today. I tend to root for the underdogs but so many times they do not win as in this book. Class, money, and society dominate in our world as seen in this novel, but do they bring happiness, not always. I enjoyed the book because it reminded me of how much friends can be strangers.

Elizabeth (30-ish) comes from a wealthy, disfunctional, emotionally distant family. Sam (20) comes from a financially struggling, loving and caring family. Elizabeth is trying to fit in with her new community in a small town in upstate New York. After living in NYC, she's finding her neighborhood peers to be a bit provincial. Sam, a scholarship student, is trying to fit in with her rich classmates. She feels more comfortable with the women who work in the college cafeteria where she has a part-time job.

When Elizabeth hires Sam to babysit a few days a week, the two strike up a friendship, based on their mutual sense of uprootedness, that extends beyond an employer/employee relationship. Sam puts Elizabeth on a pedestal, which Elizabeth inevitably falls off. Although the story has two main characters, it's really Sam's coming-of-age story.

Sullivan is excellent at creating 3-dimensional characters. The book shows how difficult it is to make the right decisions for others, when we can't even make good decisions for ourselves.

The drawback to the story for me was how unreal Sam's life was. You would think a scholarship student would not have enough time during the school year to make multiple trips to London, babysit a few days a week, AND work in the college cafeteria. Meanwhile, amidst all the drama in Elizabeth's life, she manages to write a book. For these reasons, I'm giving a 3-star rating.

I had heard a lot about this book and it didn't disappoint! Elisabeth and Sam were nuanced and felt like real people. What happens on college campuses is so often transitory and the story handled it so well. I really enjoyed this!

Friends and Strangers is a great character study by J. Courtney Sullivan. Intertwining narratives, intriguing relationships and well crafted prose make this a must read for her fans! Thoroughly enjoyed.

I haven’t quite found my ideal Sullivan novel, but I know lots of readers love her work and I’ll find one that resonates eventually. Some day!

"The love was an astonishment. Every time she looked at him, she felt a shock of wonder at how close she had come to never knowing it."

I love pretty much everything J. Courtney Sullivan writes. I could relate to so much of this as a mom of two small boys. It felt like some of these passages came directly from my brain. Something about her writing just really speaks to me. Please keep writing more books!

Courtney Sullivan moves away from her stories about unruly--and entertaining--Boston Irish families to take a different look at women's friendships. "Friends and Strangers" is about Elisabeth and Sam, two very different women who are brought together in a college town. Elisabeth's from New York, a published writer who is supposed to be working on a new novel while caring for a new baby. They've moved to town to be near inlaws and so her husband can work on an invention. Sam is a student at the women's college, from that large Boston Irish family, who is hired by Elisabeth as a nanny.

As usual, Sullivan weaves important family and social issues into the story in a seamless way. The woman is a master at creating relatable, believable family dramas, affecting books that are hard to put down. I was a huge fan of "Saints for All Occasions" and found this novel similarly addictive. "Friends and Strangers" is a large and wonderful book about so many things, all of which resonate with living in the world today.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for granting access to this enjoyable novel.

~~Candace Siegle, Greedy Reader

Elisabeth and Sam are very interesting characters in another enjoyable Sullivan novel. Again, Sullivan shows a unique understanding of women and friendship. It also explores the relationship between mother and nanny, between boss and servant, and between sisters.

Sullivan was able to insert some very interesting minor characters, especially George, an interesting firebrand in his town. The sibling relationship was also explored by Elisabeth’s relationship with her sister Charlotte.

I was very interested in the struggle over child readiness in a marriage and how that can be negotiated.

Obviously this is a novel that reading groups will enjoy exploring. I liked it a lot, but not as much as Sullivan’s earlier novels.

Thank you Netgalley for this opportunity to read this novel.

DNF. I was pretty excited about this; I generally enjoy Sullivan's books. But it read very much like a worse version of Such a Fun Age, which was such a great book. Very disappointing.