There is nothing more chilling than a best friend scorned. This book got really dark at times and I loved it! I devoured The Best Friend in one sitting and thoughts of what had transpired lingered in my mind long after concluding.

👭Book Review💊
The Best Friend
By: Jessica Fellowes
⭐️⭐️⭐️/3 stars

Is it terrible that when I go to write this review that I completely forget what happened in this book?! 😱 Either I was extremely distracted when I read this or it didn't leave much of an impression on me.

Bella and Kate become best friends as children. Kate is the leader and Bella the follower. Kate loves to push boundaries and manipulate those around her, getting a thrill out of hurting those she should care about. Her main target seems to be Bella naturally. Then Kate moves away as a teenager, promising to stay in touch, which she doesn't.

Kate comes back into Bella's life as grown women. Bella decides to let her back in which leads to more hurt and deceit. Things just seem to go downhill from there. Again, their "friendship" dissolves until their early 80's.

I didn't hate it, didn't love it. It was just kinda, eh, for me. I was hoping for more suspense, more thrills but this is not the book for that.

Published September 13, 2022

Thank you @netgalley and @stmartinspress for this ARC in exchange for my honest opinion!

The Best Friend follows the intense, toxic friendship of two best friends, Bella and Kate, over 7 decades. This premise totally drew me in. I love books that examine female friendship and the darker the better.

Unfortunately, this book wasn't a fit for my reading style. It seems like no quotation marks are a bit of a trend right now. In this case, there weren't enough differentiators between Kate and Bella's speaking styles for me to keep up. I do believe a lot of that was intentional (codependency, kindred spirts etc.) but it didn't make for a smooth reading experience for me.

As secrets and major events were revealed, I kept feeling like I'd missed something as I worked to piece together what had really happened.

I read this on my Kindle and wonder if reading a physical copy, where it's easier to flip between pages, would have been a different reading experience for me.

The book has a strong concept and I am very curious to see what Jessica Fellowes tries next outside of the Mitford series.

Thank you to Minotaur and NetGalley for the eARC to read.

Bella and Kate have been besties since they were children and the best way to describe them is absolutely toxic for one another. This book was a slow read for me and I had a hard time connecting with the characters which is fine, but I even had a hard time “loving to hate them” as many of us do with certain characters. Overall, it was a decent read and I’d like to check out other books from this author and give another try.

I like the dynamics of this book. It’s something I haven’t read before and Jessica does a fantastic job taking you through the journey.

I’ve read a prior book by this author but this one did not do it for me. I wasn’t able to connect with the characters and the plot left me scratching my head. I will try this author again, but this one was a bust

This was a good first novel for Fellowes. However, the editing could use some work. It was hard to follow, because I couldn't tell who was speaking. The premise of the story is great, but the execution lacked.

The Best Friend fell a little flat for me overall. I wouldn’t describe the book as a thriller, it is more of a fictional story. The “twist” was not very suspenseful. The dialogue between the characters was at times confusing, as there were no quotation marks or indication of who was speaking. I found the ending of the story lacking overall, and frustrating. I did enjoy the timeline changes, and thought that the lifetime friendship angle was interesting and unique to other books I have read featuring toxic female friendships.

This book had an interesting premise, but I had a difficult time keeping up. We follow Bella and Kate through their lives as best friends but some parts are a little confusing. There is a surprise or two with a slow burn.
Many thanks to St. Martin’s Press and to NetGalley for providing me with a galley in exchange for my honest opinion.

Sadly, I just could not get into this book. I tried multiple times. It didn’t hold my interest and I wasn’t a fan of the writing.

I was so disappointed with this one. I loved her last book so expected big this time. It was not to be.

These two women became childhood friends. They grow up and are so bad for each other. I've read to many like this and I truly expected this author to make it different. It just didn't do anything for me. I didn't like either character or timeline with them. It just fell way too short for me.

Thank you #NetGalley for this ARC.

3 stars and I just can't recommend this one.

I feel like I've read this story a million times. I did enjoy it, but sometimes it just gets so redundant. I liked the writing and the suspense of it though!

Friendships that span generations is the forefront of this book, and it was nice to see how friendships can start and stop throughout time but still be there for each other in the end.

I don't believe that this would actually be considered a thriller; I also had a hard time knowing who was speaking as the quotation marks were not always there, which took away from the storyline itself.

I enjoyed the genre of the book, and the storyline, just wish it would have picked up a bit sooner then later.

The Best Friend - Jessica Fellowes
The Best Friend by Jessica Fellowes follows two childhood best friends, Bella and Kate from a young age to adults. The story jumps around from a young age to adulthood, and you can see how toxic this friendship really is. However, this book was really difficult to follow as the author chose not to use quotation marks with the dialog. I found myself getting frustrated having to re-read passages. This may work wonderfully for some readers, but it wasn't for me.

This one was a DNF for me. I will not be posting a review of it but thank you for sending I think people would like this one it just wasn't for me. Thank you again for the copy.

I really enjoyed this book. It was a nice pace and the story was rather captivating. This is the first book I read by this author, but I enjoyed her writing style. I would recommend the book to others.

Unfortunately, this book didn't work for me. The way it was written had me confused a majority of the time.

Kate and Bella have known each other since they were little girls, but their relationship has not always been easy. Events, both in and out of their control, have led to periods of time in which they have ceased contact, but somehow, regardless of what has happened, they always seem to find their way back into eachothers’ lives.

This novel did not do it for me. The style left a lot to be desired. I did not like that there were entire chapters made up of just dialogue between two characters, often Kate and Bella. Not only did I sometimes find myself confused as to who was speaking, but this type of presentation provided less insight into how the words said made the characters feel. I also disliked Kate so much that her character made me not only annoyed with her, but with Bella as well for putting up with her. There were a lot of things that seemed unresolved or vague as well.

This book was incredibly confusing with dialog. It was boring. The story didn’t draw me in at all. Literally only finished it because it was an ARC.

A relationship formed as children Bella and Kate believe themselves to be best friends. As the two women mature there is an underlying toxic feeling to their relationship. Over the years there are long gaps in the times that they see each other. I found myself really disliking one of the friends so I suppose the writing was good enough to elicit those feelings in me. I can’t say that o would recommend this to my friends but I can see where a younger audience may find it interesting.