This book hit me different as I have expected it to. Myself, being in a similar age as all of the female characters I had the feeling in the beginning of "oh ok, again a reminder to do this or that". However, it turned out to be a mix of this and the opposite, which I am thankful for.
All the Right Mistakes, shows you the life of 4 of 5 long time friends, who grow up together and find themselves being kind of stuck and facing problems they never wanted to face. Learning that picture-perfect life and future is starting to break. If that wasn't enough, they get betrayed by the fifth member of the group.
It is quite interesting to observe how life can change in a blink of an eye.

This book tells the story of friendship, life and marriage so well. It doesn’t make it all look pretty or easy. It was such a good book. I did have a hard time keeping the characters apart at the very beginning but once I got to know them that solved itself. I thought the overall story was great.

When I started this book, it had a 4.61 rating on Goodreads with 50 reviews total. I was skeptical at the beginning because I was slightly (overly) annoyed at all the characters, especially the crappy husbands (Mark and Scott). I'm so glad I pushed my doubts aside and kept reading, but this book has that "IT" factor; it kept me interested and made me feel things all the way through.

To give All the Right Mistakes a catchy phrase, I'd say "Girl Power" about sums it up. These women had some really shitty things happen to them, but I was SO pumped up by the end, I was sad to see these characters go.


Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an advance copy. All thoughts are my own.

Female friendship centric plots are best as they hold so many relatable issues and ALL THE RIGHT MISTAKES by Laura Jamison is nothing different. I am thankful to NetGalley and She Writes Press for sending me the e-arc. This book is a joy ride for me.
It is hard to write a story where the author put more than two center characters but Laura Jamison did it beautifully and brings up various degrees of issues female faces every day. There are sexism, male nepotism, career issues, maintaining a balance between personal life and professional life an so on. I personally love how truthful the plot I to these issues and as a female I can relate to so many things with each of the main protagonists.

I would love to read a sequel if there is any. I am not complaining about anything much but regarding the writing , I can say I would more appreciate if there is more metaphor. Love this book anyways though.

Thank you to the author, She Writes Press and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This book centering on female friendship sounded promising, and I thought parts of it were really well done. I liked the short chapters, alternating among the women's POVs, and I thought the pacing of the story was good. With the exception of the uber-successful one among the group of five, all of them struggle to varying degrees with issues many women can identify with: sexism, male nepotism, infertility and the ticking of the biological clock, work/life balance etc. This read very authentically. But. But. All of the women featured came from a place of such privilege, and they seemed to inhabit a hermetically sealed upper middle class world. I found a lot of the dialogue and interactions fairly wooden. The ending was satifying, with Ms uber-successful having experienced some bumps in the road of her charmed life and learning from that in a good way, and the others also finding a way past some of the issues they faced - and the friendship amongst all of them being renewed and strengthened.

All in all, a satisfying read, if not particularly memorable.

There seems to be quite a few books exploring female groups recently but this was my first. My first thoughts was just how privileged these women are. But then it's not like the book shys away from this fact. The group (with the exception of Heather, obviously) are generally pretty likeable and each deals with issues which many of us can relate to: sexism, infertility, loss and the work/life balance, just to name a few. The plot read well and it was easy to fall into it with short chapters which built up a nice pace. I wondered if it would have been worth having chapters from Healther's POV but then I do understand that the cringe tweets played a part in portraying her character. This isn't a particularly groundbreaking book that I'll never forget but it's a nice, easy read which will provide entertainment during these turbulent times.

Thanks NetGalley for my ARC of this book.

Wow, what a good book! This was one of those I couldn’t put down. If I wasn’t cleaning house, I would have finished it in one day.

All the Right Mistakes is a novel about five college friends who are turning 40. Quite a milestone in anyone’s life, let alone these five successful women. All having graduated from Dartmouth, they took different paths after college: one became a stay at home Mom, one a successful lawyer who may have waited too long to have a family, one gave up her medical career to raise her family, one is trying to have it all, and one seems to have it all including being a semi-celebrity. This last friend, “H”, writes a book detailing all the mistakes her friends have made on the road to having it all, while seemingly showcasing how she has done everything perfectly. Not only does she use their initials, but she tags them in her post on the day the book releases! Needless to say, the four friends are not pleased. And then the story really gets going when karma seems to settle in.

Although I’m not a doctor, or lawyer, or a semi-celebrity, I found this story very relatable for women my age. We’ve all probably got that one Friend who lords success over others, or tries to make others in the group feel less than successful or like they haven’t reached their full potential. I thought the storyline was well written and the characters were believable and like able. Such a great read for a day at the pool, or the beach, or a day by yourself.

Thank you to NetGalley, the publishers and the author for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

LIKED - All the Right Mistakes by Laura Jamison (general fiction) (upcoming release)

From the publisher: "Five college friends have arrived at forty in very different circumstances, but with at least one thing in common: they are among the more privileged in society. Elizabeth and Sara are lawyers, Martha is a doctor, Carmen is a wealthy and well-educated homemaker, and Heather, the most successful, is a famous tech executive—and after more than two decades of friendship, they know one another better than anyone.

Then Heather writes a women’s advice book detailing the key life “mistakes” of her four friends—opting out, ramping off, giving half effort, and forgetting your fertility—that becomes wildly popular, and Elizabeth, Sara, Martha, and Carmen all feel the sting of Heather’s cruel words. Despite their status, these women face everyday obstacles, including work problems, parenting challenges, secondary infertility, racism, sexism, financial stress, and marital woes—and as they weather their fortieth year, each one can’t help but wonder if their life might have been different if they had followed Heather’s advice.

But as these friends are continually reminded, life is complex, messy, disappointing, and joyful, often all at once—and no one can plan her way out of that reality. In the end, all five women must embrace the idea that their lives are shaped not just by their choices but also by how they handle the obstacles life inevitably throws at us all."

I enjoyed this novel! I thought the friendships in this story were realistic, and I appreciated @laurajamisonauthor perspective that there isn't just one "right" way to do life.

Thank you to @netgalley and @shewritespress for providing me with an advance copy of this title. It will be released on August 4th, 2020. I'll put a reminder in my stories that day!

All the Right Mistakes is the story of five old college friends and the different paths their lives have taken. Heather writes a self help book using the life "mistakes" the other four have made and the book becomes wildly popular but also threatens to tear their friendships apart. The characters were so very relatable(well, most of them!) and I was pulled in from the first page. Laura Jamison has penned a solid debut novel that I give 5 stars. All the Right Mistakes is a must read for women! I can't wait to read her next book!

I have complicated thoughts about this book, but maybe I'm a little young / without children to be the target audience. It centres on 5 college friends: Heather, Elizabeth, Martha, Carmen and Sara, who are now approaching forty having experienced very different lives post-college.

Heather doesn't have much of a point of view - she's a super famous COO now, and we see her character interact with the others through email, and also see her cringe-worthy tweets. Elizabeth is a lawyer married to Will who is a stay-at-home Dad. Martha has 2 kids, is pregnant, and is debating going back to work as a Doctor. Her husband Robert is also a Doctor. Carmen got pregnant in college and hasn't worked since. Her daughter is now at college, and she's having marriage troubles with her husband who she has been with since college. And Sara has 4 kids, is married to Scott, and is really struggling with all that she has to do at work and at home.

This book follows the group over a number of years, whilst Heather has released a tell-all advice book about the mistakes her friends have made that have stopped them having successful careers. Honestly I hated Heather and screw friendship because she didn't deserve forgiveness (though she did have some horrible things happen to her, one of which wasn't deserved). Also, Elizabeth named her twins after Margaret Thatcher and Winston Churchill which just doesn't sit well with me.

There really isn't much diversity in this at all. As much as the women struggle they still don't really acknowledge the privilege they do have. But it does really hit home that nobody should tell a woman how to live her life, and that nobody has a straight road to being successful. So conflicted feelings. The writing is good but it could have said a lot more than it did.

Five women, Heather, Elizabeth, Carmen, Martha, and Sara, once a tight-knit group in college are now all approaching forty, and have encountered different obstacles on their journeys through life. Elizabeth, an attorney, is about to get passed for a promotion at work, and has struggled to have another child after her first. Martha, a former doctor, is torn between staying home with her kids after her baby is born or going back into medicine. Sara, an attorney, grapples between having more time at home with her four kids or taking a hefty promotion that will provide them with the money they desparately need. And Carmen, the only stay-at-home mom of the bunch, is dealing with a husband who may not love her anymore and an inability to get pregnant. When Heather, COO of her company FLASH, comes out with a book equating each of her friends' lives to four major mistakes younger women should avoid, the group must decide whether they're going to follow Heather's advice, or prove her wrong.

It took me a while to get into this book, and that might’ve been all the different perspectives, the short chapters, and the way all the women are intertwined into each other’s storylines. I enjoyed that each of the women had a distinct personality, and each of their character choices felt like natural reactions to the situations they faced. I felt it a bit jarring when they would all go back and forth on whether they should forgive Heather for writing the book in the first place, but I liked the conversation the book had about how you can forgive someone for doing something to you, but you can’t forgive them for doing something to someone else – that is not for you to decide, and that forgiveness is solely up to the person who has been hurt, It was a nice character study into the lives of these older woman, which is definitely a change from what I usually read. I wish there was a different perspective of a woman who's major focus wasn't on having kids, because I believe that could've been an important conversation to have (that being said *minor spoiler* I did appreciate where Carmen's storyline went in that regard).

All in all, it was a quiet book about women who've made choices in the past that perhaps were not the greatest, but it led them to exactly where they needed to be. They came together and, for the most part, were there for each other in their darkest moments and worked to build each other up. I believe a lot of people will be able to find something to relate to in All the Right Mistakes. I can't wait to see what they think when it's released on August 4th, 2020.

*thank you NetGalley and She Writes Press for the copy of All the Right Mistakes, all thoughts are my own*

**trigger warnings for miscarriage, death of a child, and death of a significant other**

Thank you Netgalley for this ARC of All the Right Mistakes by Laura Jamison.

This is a story of five women who have been friends since college and are now approaching forty and confronting all sorts of issues in their family. They are also trying to plan a trip that one of their friends just announced she won't be attending.

If I sound completely uninterested in the synapses, that's accurate. But I think my most "I'm going to stop you right there" moment, was when I realized that I couldn't keep the characters straight, nor did I care to.

Usually I love a book about female friends, but this just constantly kept rubbing right against the grain for me. For a group of friends in their late thirties, I did not appreciate their friend dynamic. I found a lot of their interactions to be petty and prying. I also couldn't tell them apart. Which one is having career/fertility/marriage/parenting issues? All of them? Got it.

I really enjoyed this book. Maybe it is because I am approaching 40 myself and still have many of the same friends that I did when I was 18, but I found myself relating to the struggles of all of the characters. I understood the internal conflicts over balancing careers and motherhood more than I realized and it really made me think about some of my decisions. I found my heart breaking for them as they struggled (Lucy!) and smiling when they had successes. Rarely do I find a book where I understand all the characters--- even kind of the "villian". I really liked the book and it was a perfect summer read.

I miss my friends. I miss planning Girls’ Trips. I miss being part of the every day talk of kids and jobs and problems and struggles. Social distancing is creating distances that remove us from that life.

Reading All the Right Mistakes by Laura Jamison let me get back to those days in the story of Carmen, Martha, Elizabeth, Sara and Heather. These ladies are college friends that have worked hard to preserve that status through marriages, career success, families and turning 40. But when Heather exploits her friends by writing a book about what they did wrong in their careers, the friendship is challenged.

I really needed these girls. I enjoyed their interactions when I can't have many. Jamison did a fabulous job of expressing that is real about the bondings that women share and how friendships can endure through all the interference life throws at you.

College friends coming together is always a great premise for a good read and Laura Jamison does not disappoint with All the Right Mistakes. I feel the reader will be able to connect with at least one of the women and be able to relate their stories to his/her own life.

I enjoyed this book, which explored a close group of female friends and how their lives and relationships with each other changed and developed over time. I also enjoyed the way that the author looked at the "mistakes" in each woman's life and showed how the other women viewed these.

Enjoyed this book. Could relate to many of the stories of these women. Really enjoy reading about female friendships and how they change over the course of time. Also enjoyed the discussions about women navigating their careers with children and families also competing for equal attention. Would definitely recommend this book to others. Thanks to NetGalley for the advanced reader copy.

Thank you for allowing me to discover such a good new author for my repertoire! Great plot line, interesting characters, I will recommend to friends and family.

This is a great brain candy book about a group of women in their late thirties. A major plus is no one has an affair in this book. It was compelling and I read it in one sitting.

Five close college friends are now turning 40 and their lives have changed so much since they first met. Elizabeth and Sara are now successful lawyers. Martha, a mother ready to go back to work being a doctor. Carmen, the only stay at home mom now turned empty nester and Heather, the famous and most successful of them all. Heather releases a new bestselling book about her four friend’s biggest life mistakes and with the release of this book the tension between long standing friends comes to the surface. The five ladies must wrestle against their differences, confront their life mistakes, and really figure out if their college friendships can last past forty. In the end, all the girls realize that their own mistakes were actually the Right mistakes because it led them to where they are now. While Heather and the other girls have faults they are reminded that friends stick together even through the hardest and biggest mistakes.
Overall, the book was good. I could have done without the cursing. I felt there was really no relevance for it except when it involved Carmen’s character as that seems to be more her speaking nature. I cannot say I loved this book. The original description of this book caught my attention but as I read, I didn’t feel super connected to the characters. I think the overarching theme is well done but the specificities needed more work. Good try for a debut book.