A bit confusing, and unfortunately not rewarding when you wade through the beginning. I hate seeing female friendships portrayed this way even though I know some are

Thanks to Netgalley for the free copy in exchange for an honest review

This is the story of Bella and Kate. Of Kate and Bella. Best friends and sometimes enemies.

Okay, LOTS of negative reviews on this one, but I'm here to say I enjoyed this book.

Don't go into it thinking you are reading a thriller. It really isn't that at all. What it is is an exposé on friendship, particularly the lifelong kind, told through the story of Bella and Kate.

Bella- timid, shy, and trusting.
Kate- wild, selfish, and glamorous.

We all know this type of friendship; we've all been one of these types of friends. The story, in that way, is 100% relatable.

The main complaint reviewers are making is the lack of quotation marks and tag lines in the dialogue. Yes, that's an inconvenience, for sure, but it really wasn't that difficult to follow. It's only ever two people talking at the same time. 🤷🏻‍♀️

The story, though it spans the lives of Bella and Kate, moves rather quickly, and I could have read this in one sitting, if I had the time. I enjoyed Fellowes's writing style. Her characters were dynamic & I found myself getting furious at Kate, my anger mounting as the novel went on. If an author's writing can illicit emotion, that's good writing, in my opinion.

Overall, I enjoyed this divulgence into the friendship of Bella & Kate.

Thank you to Minotaur & the author for my review copy. This book hits shelves on 9/13.

I really think I see what the author was trying to do here, but it unfortunately just fell a bit short for me! It was one of my most anticipated for the fall because it sounded like an amazing suspense, but I just couldn’t get there. I struggle a lot with books that don’t use quotation marks for dialogue, and there were several times throughout this read that I lost track of who was speaking. The overall plot of the book was very interesting and I enjoyed the skips in time. I think the best way I can explain why it didn’t work for me is that it has one viscerally triggering and personal scene, and then the remainder of the book is somewhat disconnected emotionally and the characters feel at a distance from the reader. I would still recommend it to a couple of complete suspense lovers, but this was too slow burn for me and I didn’t fully connect to the story in the way I thought I would.

“𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝒐𝒏𝒍𝒚 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝑰 𝒌𝒏𝒐𝒘 𝒇𝒐𝒓 𝒄𝒆𝒓𝒕𝒂𝒊𝒏 𝒊𝒔 𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒏𝒐𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒊𝒏 𝒍𝒊𝒇𝒆 𝒕𝒖𝒓𝒏𝒔 𝒐𝒖𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒘𝒂𝒚 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒌 𝒊𝒕 𝒘𝒊𝒍𝒍.”

Being marketed as a “dark and suspenseful novel from Jessica Fellowes following the intense friendship of two kindred spirits across their lifetimes,” I was very excited to dive into this book.

Jessica Fellowes’ writing is interesting; there certainly is the bones of a good story here. I loved the idea of seeing Kate and Bella’s friendship throughout multiple decades. Lifelong friends are ones who typically know you the best, but also can push your buttons like no one else, which was definitely reflected. The mystery that weaves throughout the later part of the book of what happened to Bella, alongside who was with her, was also interesting (but I wanted way more from it). I also found it to be a quick read, partly due to all the dialogue that was presented without quotation marks that could easily be read through (there were large chunks that were nothing but conversations, usually between Kate and Bella). However, no quotation marks also made it difficult to follow, and since Kate and Bella were similar in many ways, it was also hard to distinguish who was speaking. They are both selfish, and treat the people around them poorly; I would’ve loved a bit more development from the characters of David, Alex, and even Randall, as I think it would’ve made the plot tighter. I think the flaw for me overall was that I expected a thriller, when the book really was the exploration of a toxic friendship and the bonds we can have with our best friend.

The Best Friend is a story of the ins and outs of lifelong female friendship, the bond of sisterhood, abandonment and loyalty. Although I found the writing style confusing, I would definitely be willing to try out Fellowes’ Mitford Murders series, as I think it would be more to my liking. Thank you to Minotaur Books and NetGalley for the ARC!

This book was not my best friend. It was the annoying friend that wants all the attention, but has nothing interesting to say.

Unfortunately, most of this book just did not work for me. I listed to the audio book while simultaneously reading the ebook. The audio was definitely better at being able to discern who was speaking. The written book has no quotation marks so figuring out who is speaking takes a little too much work. The voices of the friends as young girls grated my nerves though. The voice of Kate was way to shouty.

The story spans the lives of two friends who have an extremely dysfunctional and toxic relationship. I never completely understood why Bella would continue to feel such longing for Kate’s friendship. Kate was never shown as sympathetic or even supportive of Bella. I could kind of understand how one person could be enamored with another and crave being around them, but after all the stunts Kate pulled throughout their lives, it was hard to believe that Bella would continue to be such a doormat.

Another frustration was that Kate was supposedly somewhat famous, but that wasn’t really explored, it was simply “told” to the reader. I didn’t mind that she was an unlikeable character because I much prefer to feel something for a character – like or dislike. But I had a hard time caring about what happened to any of the characters. I felt like I only knew them on the surface. And what was the deal with Bella’s first husband? I still wonder where he went all those times. It seems that this story had lots of strings tied in knots that were never undone. They were simply dropped, and another piece of string was picked up.

So obviously this book did not work for me, but please remember that this is just my opinion. You may like the book a lot more than I did, but I can’t recommend this one.

Thank you to NetGalley, Minotaur books and Macmillan audio for the advance copy and audio to read/listen to and review.

Wow! Talk about an intense toxic friendship through the years! This one will keep you reading and wanting more! Great thriller!

Thank you to Jessica Fellowes, Minotaur Books, and NetGalley for the advanced copy of The Best Friend.

This book follows the toxic friendship between Bella and Kate, from age 6 to 82 years old. I did appreciate the linear timeline of the book, broken down by their ages. Especially since the book covered so much of their lives.

Unfortunately, I did not enjoy this book. At no point did I connect with the characters or the plot. Their friendship, which was meant to hover between love and hate, just did not make sense to me. I acknowledge there is the pull of having history with someone. But the way the story was written, Bella and Kate just seemed to fall in and out of the friendship with little depth to each shift.

The dialogue was also very difficult for me to follow. Apparently I need a more traditional dialogue structure (meaning, I need quotation marks). I kept having to reread to see who was saying what, and that really takes away from the flow of the conversation the characters are meant to have.

I would not recommend this book, but I am grateful for the chance to early read this book and hope my feelings are an outlier - that other readers enjoy this book more than I did!

Unfortunately, I did not enjoy this novel.

This is intended to be a novel about the power of female friendship, but the characters were undeveloped, barely more than outlines, which made the relationship between the two women at the heart of the story nonexistent.

In addition to the shallow character development, the writing style made it nearly impossible to follow the specifics of the story. Pages of dialogue were presented with no narrative, or even dialogue tags. It was a struggle to know who was saying what. The few plot points that were present in the story were skipped over or hidden in a vaguely worded sentence, leaving the reader with no clear sense of what had happened.

Overall, this is not a novel I would recommend.

I really struggled with this book . It was definitely not a mystery thriller and for the most part I couldn’t understand the purpose of the story . 🤷‍♀️ There was not one likeable character and the friendship made no sense

Know that this takes a bit of work and that it's a slow burn. It's the story of Kate and Bella, a pair of toxic friends, over the course of their very long lives. The more conventional (for want of a better description) chapters alternate with conversation between the two- and it won't be immediately apparent who is speaking. I found it disorienting at first but then fell into the rhythm. What caused their break? That's revealed slowly. There's no big drama here but rather drama that was important to the two of them. It's an interesting read presented in an unusual way. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. I recognize that this seems to be a polarizing novel, mostly because of the format, but I found it to be a good read.

I thought the premise of this one sounded interesting, but after giving it a bit of a good, I am officially going to DNF this one. Sometimes when I am struggling with a book, I head over to Goodreads to see others' reviews to see if I'm missing something. This one doesn't have a very high rating, so I know I'm not the only one that struggled with this one. The execution was messy, and I was kind of scratching my head to figure out what the point was of the story. Thank you to the publisher for giving me the chance to read an early copy of this book.

I was not prepared for this book. I wasn’t prepared for how I couldn’t put it down, I wasn’t prepared for how intense of a read it would be, I wasn’t prepared for how emotional it would make me, and I definitely wasn’t prepared for how good it would be.

Quite simply, I was blown away.

Fellowes doesn’t bother to use a traditional storytelling method when writing this book. She made a decision to do away with such things as traditional dialogue, POV, narrative structure, chapter structure, and sequences of events. While time stays linear, this book does sometimes skip months, years, or even decades at a time between chapters. I have a great deal of respect for authors who make executive decisions about how they absolutely need their story to be told, even if they might face pressure from both their imprint and their editors and advice from agents saying that the book might sell better if they changed this or that and yet the author sticks by their convictions and says, “Yeah, this book may be a bit different or off the beaten path, but it’s my story and this is the way it needs to be told. This is my line in the sand.”

This story is so toxic and so tragic. It was a different time in America, when unwed mothers left town to have their babies somewhere they couldn’t bring shame on their families and females certainly never had anything but platonic feelings for their friends. When women didn’t think sexual assault was assault–they just laid there and took it and blamed themselves because of course men couldn’t help their urges. That’s why girls had to be so good and boys would be boys, after all.

Bella and Kate, two girls who grew up in two totally different situations, desperate to hold on to one another no matter what in their years of adolescence, ripped apart suddenly in the last years of high school, only to reunite by chance years later. Neither of them are the same, but some things never change. And some things, it seems, have only gotten worse.

I have always liked dialogue that does away with the traditional dialogue structure. It allows the reader to imagine the tone and volume with which the characters are speaking. It allows the reader to imagine the voices, imagine the scene. It’s a great way to allow the reader to interpret conversations. Likewise, I enjoy a non-standard chapter format. It’s a refreshing break from the traditional chapter and story structure.

This whole book was so refreshing, from the non-traditional writing style to the tragic yet moving plot of two best friends who are far too toxic to be in each other’s lives but can’t seem to keep away from one another either. They’re caught in each other’s gravitational pull and are unable to stay away long, like mutual abuse victims who can’t help but gravitate back to their abuser, but their abuser is each other. They breathe in one another’s poisonous air like they can’t live without it, but they always know they’re on borrowed time.

It’s a stunning and intense read that kept me riveted from start to finish.

Thanks to NetGalley, St. Martin’s Press, and Minotaur Books for granting me early access to this title.

This book started off good. I was a little confused with the writing because it switched back and forth between to characters without really saying who was who. But you get the hang of it. I was really curious what happened to Kate! But then the book just dragged. I found myself going back to see if I misread the blurb, I thought it was a thriller. I would not call this a thriller but definitely reminiscent of how toxic female friendships can be. All together an ok read. Might have liked better if I knew from the get go it wasn't a thriller.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for this review copy. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I didn't enjoy this book at all. I didn't find it suspenseful at all. It just kept spinning around in circles with the same drama over and over again.

The main characters have this weird on again off again friendship that spans out over almost their entire lives. Their relationship is toxic from the very beginning. There is a strong "queen bee and sidekick" vibe with their friendship and they never get away from it or change. At one point in the book there is a scene where one if the friends is raped and the other blames and gaslights her and nothing changes until they're off again. Their relationship was just exhausting. All the characters in this book were just awful.

One thing I did enjoy about this book is the writing style. When writing dialogue the author doesn't use quotations or anything like that. They just skip a line when someone else speaks. I find this makes the dialogue portions of the book quick to read.

I will give this 1.5 stars because of the audiobook. It was the only thing that helped me get through it, the performances by Antonia Beamish and Lucy Scott were literally the only good thing about this book. I had heard that the book itself contained no quotation marks, which made it nearly impossible for other reviewers to read. The audiobook made the experience much better because I knew when Bella and Kate were speaking and so I could (mostly) follow it a bit better.

It's the story of two women from the time they are six until they are elderly who have a very toxic friendship. There's some gaslighting, lying, sneaking around, manipulation, more lying, more gaslighting, over and over. There are no likable or sympathetic characters except maybe for Bella's daughter, but she's not on the page much.

The storyline isn't a mystery/thriller as it's described, I suppose if you stretch your imagination there's a tiny bit of mystery surrounding a "shocking event" but that honestly turned out to be a non-issue because it's kind of obvious what is going on.

There are skips in the timeline, things hidden that are brought out later, and it doesn't seem necessary at all. I kept listening because I had hoped that the book would get better, would start to make more sense, but it really doesn't.

This is an overall mess and it's my recommendation to skip it if you can. And if you decide to give it a try, most DEFINITELY GET THE AUDIOBOOK.

Kate and Bella. Bella and Kate. A friendship that was off and on since they were six years old. Kate the beautiful, confident, actress and Bella the one who always seems to be left behind. Bella does develop into a confident painter as the years progress. They find themselves together and as friends sporadically throughout their lives. Always ending with a harsh falling out. I had a tough time with this book. I did not connect with any of the characters. The dialogue was choppy and hard to follow at times. It is an extremely quick read. Thank you to Jessica Fellowes, St. Martin’s Press, and Minotaur Books for gifting me this book.

The Best Friend by Jessica Fellowes left me with what I can best describe is an itchy feeling at the back of my neck; the sense that something is wrong but it's not immediately apparent what it is. The sense that you cannot fully trust either of the two women at the center of the story. The tale of two best friends, Kate and Bella, spanning their lives from girlhood to old age, the story is a definite slow burn. It is not a down the middle mystery or thriller, but not quite a family drama. I loved the honesty (despite the aforementioned lack of trust) of the relationship - friendship, even best friendship, can be fragile and mysterious, and this is illustrated by Kate and Bella's relationship. I would absolutely recommend The Best Friend to fans of Ruth Ware and Janelle Brown. Outstanding writing, cannot wait to read more by Ms. Fellowes!

The Best Friend was quite an interesting read. I had a hard time connecting with the characters and grasping the time frame and setting. I think the way it was written, bouncing between standard storytelling and ping pong conversation without quotation marks or designated speakers, was difficult to follow.

I really wanted to like this book, but I just couldn’t.

There was no point.

And also NO QUOTATION MARKS in conversations where entire chapters are back and forth conversations.

I thought maybe it would get better, but it didn’t at all. It just kept getting worse.

I will not post this to my Goodreads or bookstagram. Others may enjoy it and I don’t want to discourage sales.

Bella and Kate have been best friends, on and off, for much of their life. They find themselves closer than any of their other friends, but also wonder how much they can trust each other. When a shocking event occurs, their relationship is test as never before -- and the aftermath shapes their friendship, marriages, and the trajectories of the rest of their lives.

This is a creatively written and structured thriller that keeps you guessing.

Recommended!