With Friends like these…All I can say is dysfunctional. You would think a group of friends getting together for a weekend celebration would be fun. Not with this group….From the beginning you start to see there’s a lot a of drama and hate between them. I didn’t expect the ending but I was really happy with how things ended. Awesome read!

When a group of 30 something college students get together at a secluded cabin they’re all there for different reasons. Amelia is there because she wants to reconnect with the friends she thought she lost when she broke up the engagement with the birthday boy Griffin. Jonah is there because he wants to see Amelia again he’s been in love with her since the first day they met and thinks he may be the reason engagement was called off, Nancy the wild American is there because she wants to ask one of her financially stable friends to loan her money to help her get out of debt Ross is there because he needed a break from the phony life he made for himself, Griffin is there because it’s his birthday and last we have Billy, he’s always the last to show up and this birthday bash is no different. Only this time he shows up with a dead man in his backseat. He was drunk driving and hit a pedestrian and although he tried to bring him to the hospital the man died in route. After alone discussion and a five against one vote they decide to throw the body in the nearby lake. They think they have solved the problem, but their problems have just started! This book is so good and they have so many subplots that made it even more intriguing not to mention the social aspects of the group but the man had a backpack full of money a ski mask in the night with them and then his friends come looking for him? This is so good I really want to read other stories by this author if they are anything like “friends like these“ then I’m in. I highly recommend this book if you like books about ordinary people trying trying to outsmart criminals and social drama you’ll love this book I know I did. The characters were great the plot was awesome narrator did a great job. I was given this book by Net Galley and I am leaving this review voluntarily please forgive any mistakes as I am blind and dictate my review but all opinions are definitely my own. #WithFriendsLikeThese, #NetGally

3.85⭐ for this thriller.

I made the mistake of beginning this one, then going on vacation where I wasn't able to listen at all. I had a week long break that made it hard for me to get back into the story with ease. I had forgotten who was who and who was more connected with who, but all around I liked this one.

6 friends ~ Billy, Nancy, Griffin, Amelia, Ross and Jonah ~ are meeting at a remote house that's 4 1/2 miles from the nearest neighbor for a reunion to celebrate a birthday. I loved that they each tell a bit of the story as the chapters alternate between their perspectives.
I don't even know why they wanted to reunite really ~ there was so much drama between all of them. There are some nice twisty secrets they all have too. I am not against swearing, but if I am noticing it then there must be an abundance.

It comes in at 8 hours and 50 minutes and fine sounding at 2x. Joshua Manning did a pretty okay job narrating. Although his accent was perfect for the Scotland setting, I thought he sounded a little monotony at times. As always I wish there was a female narrator for the women characters though.

I have not read Keri's work before and I'd like to do so again.

Wow! 5 stars!!! This book is an on the edge of your seat thriller. I couldn’t stop listening. It is a story about a group of old college friends getting together to celebrate the birthday of one of the friends. In the beginning of the book, one of the friends runs over a man and kills him while driving drunk to the get together. The group decides to hide the body and cover up the death. I don’t want to give away any spoilers, so I won’t say much about the plot after that. But the book is about old vengeances among the friends and the real reasons the birthday celebration meeting was being held. The book moves along at a great speed as the action unfolds. The narrator did an awesome job of speaking clear and concise and at a great speed. He changed his voice and tone to distinguish between characters. Overall, this book is a great read!

I received an audiobook ARC of this novel.

Story: The story reminded me of The Guest List, and In My Dreams I Hold a Knife. The characters are all not entirely as they seem, and none of them are really likable. It's hard to root for anyone in this group! The twist of this novel didn't arrive until very close to the end and there wasn't any lead up at all. In some cases, this can work, but in this case, it was too little, too late for my taste. I would give the story a 3/5 stars.

Narration: The narration of the novel was good! The narrator offered many different voices for all of the characters. I was so shocked by Nancy's accent until we got more of her back story. The narrator enunciated very clearly and it was easy enough to speed up the book to 2x without losing any context. 4/5 stars.

What a horror of a book!

Billy Maguire, on his way to Scotland for a reunion with his university friends, stops for a few drinks en route. Then, on the deserted roads leading to the remote location, he manages to run over a pedestrian.

Oh Billy! WHY?!

The man is alive, and Billy puts him in the back seat of his car, planning to leave him outside the nearest hospital. But then the man dies—and Billy panics. He drives to the reunion with the body in the car and begs his friends for help.

Why, Billy?! WHY?! With Friends Like These just keeps getting more and more twisted. So many things go wrong, so many bad decisions... it's like a car accident (pun intended) that you can't look away from! This definitely gets your heart pounding, maybe a little bit of head shaking telling the characters so many times: that's a bad idea!!!!

WOW Who doesn't love a college friend reunion story?
This audiobook kept my attention until the very end! Although this book is pitched as what happens after a drunken driving episode that causes an accident. In my opinion, story is really that of a gathering of old university friends for a birthday. Billy's accident (detailed in the book summary) brings things to a head quickly is this gathering and it's not long before there are multiple secrets revealed including a planned murder.
This story was gripping and I could not figure out who was at fault and why. If you like reunions gone bad, mysteries to solve, and of course at least one villain to hate then With Friends Like These is for you!
#dreamscapemedia #withfriendslikethese #karibeevis

This was a mediocre read in my opinion. I didn't feel there was enough character development for a higher rating. The reason the calamity happened isn't mentioned until almost the end without building drive behind it.

3.5 stars

The structure of this story was interesting. It started out pretty fast-paced; the suspense and tension built, and although it was maintained through a lot of the narrative, the whole last chunk of the book felt a bit melodramatic, unnecessarily graphic, and just overly-drawn-out. I didn’t dislike it, but my attention definitely wandered a bit by the very ending, and although I just finished it, I’m finding that, as a result, I’m a bit hazy on some of the details. It’s possible I just wasn’t in the right mood for parts of this story, but regardless, I’ll probably check out other books by the writer in the future.

Talk about a horrible reunion! So... I think the reader is supposed to like a couple of these characters. I can't say I really liked any of them in the end. The author does throw in several twists along the way, but at times it all feels a bit too much and is unbelievable. Overall, I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it either.

Thanks to Dreamscape Media and NetGalley for the ALC in exchange for my honest review.

When a group of old friends from university plan a weekend reunion, they find themselves in a rather troubling situation right from the start. They have to decide what to do and then quickly start to wonder which of the friends they can really trust.

This was entertaining as an audiobook. I had some issues with some of the characters choices as they seemed so far fetched. There is virtually nobody with morals in this book. Ultimately, I easily predicted who played a part in some of the sinister happenings and felt a little less than thrilled with the ending overall.

Listen to this if you enjoy a Scottish accent and characters with all the flaws.

"Billy Maguire, on his way to Scotland for a reunion with his university friends, stops for a few drinks en route. Then, on the deserted roads leading to the remote location, he manages to run over a pedestrian.
The man is alive, and Billy puts him in the back seat of his car, planning to leave him outside the nearest hospital. But then the man dies—and Billy panics. He drives to the reunion with the body in the car and begs his friends for help."

Imagine the excitement of attending a reunion with university friends and one of them shows up with a dead body in their car. What would you do?
This story is told through the voice of each of the six friends at the reunion. With each voice we learn more about the past and present dynamics of the friendships as well as how they each process the best way to handle their current situation.
This book started off a little slow for me and at one point I was pretty sure that I had the ending figured out. But I was wrong. The story picked up about half way through the book and the final twist shocked me. I enjoyed this story and loved the ending.


Thank you to NetGalley and Dreamscape Media for this audiobook.
Release Date scheduled for June 21, 2022.

3/5

Thank you Dreamscape Media for the advanced listening copy!

When Griffin gets his college pals back together for his birthday, he never predicts the chaos that will ensue. Billy McGuire, the group's resident mess-up, drinks too much before heading to the get-together, hitting a pedestrian and ultimately killing him. When he shows up at the get-away, dead man in two, the group has to decide what to do with him, and if they should let their friend take the fall or cover for him. Little does the group know, things are far more convoluted than they even know.

This one just didn't hook me. The writing was good enough and the story had a few twists, there just wasn't anything that created any buy-in for me. Things got way too crazy way too fast, in a way that seemed TOTALLY unrealistic. Parts of the middle I found fairly boring and I definitely became uninterested about halfway through. I think this could work for some people but unfortunately it didn't work for me.

3.5 rounded up!

Honest review here. The first chapter was gripping, definatly hooked me in. Billy makes the dumb decision to "drink drive-lol is that the English term for Drunk Driving??" and kills a man on a deserted road. He shows up at the house his friends rented and the next few chapters we are introduced to the 6 other friends (Ross, Amelia, Nancy, Griff, Ross and Jonah).

Ultimately as we can expect with a thriller, the friends decide it is better to "hide the body" than do what normal people in real life would do....tell the police. After their poor choice things really start to fall apart, tensions rise, secrets are revealed and as the reader you pretty much hate most of the characters-ha.

The bad guys/thugs were almost comical how "beef headed" they were, including the name--Dougie McCool.
In the middle of the book it started to drag a little and I thought I had the story figured out, then BAM!
75% mark hit, and there was a twist I did not see coming.
The action really picked up and became tense!!

I was thrilled to the end and enjoyed the ending :)

Some down sides: The F word was used in excess, I mean like A-L-O-T. There were some dumb conversations between the thugs. Billy was a painful character to read about.

I will definatly check out more Keri Beevis books in the future!
Great fast paced thriller for sure!

Thank you net galley for the advanced copy of this book in audio form. The narrator did a great job jumping between the multiple characters and accents. I have not been compensated for my honest review.

AUDIOBOOK REVIEW
🌟🌟🌟🌟

A birthday celebration brings six college friends together. If you like reading about loathsome characters, this book has its share. Most of these “friends” don’t even like each other. Why would they want to get together? Well…one of them has a motive but before it’s revealed, there is a terrible accident.

Billy is a big drinker known for his screwups. He starts the celebration early and hits a man on the road to the Air BNB. He panics, puts the body in the car, and continues his drive. As it turns out, the man is a thug and his friends come looking for him.

This thriller has many twists that will keep you on the edge of your seat. I haven’t read this author before and she has a collection of books that look just as enticing!

Sincere thanks to NetGalley and Dreamscape Media for this gifted audiobook. This review is my honest opinion.

#withfriendslikethese #keribeevis #netgalley #justfinishedreading #dreamscapemedia #audiobookreview #inexchangeforreview #thrillerbookobsessed #bookrecommendations #thrillerbookaddict #bookloverofinstagrammer #bookstagrammer #coloradobookstagrammer #coloradoreader #booklove #booknerd #somanybookssolittletime #bookreviewerofinstragram #thrillerloverofbookstagram #fortheloveofbooks

I blew through With Friends Like These so fast I didn't even have time to list it as "currently reading"!

I'm not usually a fan of books where there's something to actively dislike about almost every character, but I found myself immediately invested in this reunion gang's holiday. These were mostly despicable people, with a useless guy thrown in for good measure, and perhaps two worth rooting for, in the end. Watching their celebration fall apart, and knowing even worse was sure to come, was remarkably fascinating. I kept coming back, expecting the worst and finding it. It was disturbingly entertaining.

Especially satisfying was the ending, which brought a few key plot points full circle. I won't say those who deserved it "got theirs", because it wasn't that simple. But I nodded a few times as the author, Keri Beevis, wrapped it all up, thinking, "Yes, that works."

I wouldn't recommend With Friends Like These to just anyone, but if you like dark and twisted friends-betraying-friends stories, then you'll love this one. I fully expect HBOMax or Netflix to make this into a movie soon.

This book was overall pretty wild. All the characters clearly had some major issues. Also a lot of drama between them. I loved the writing of this book and the narrator was excellent. The ending was just meh to me after a pretty great book and just didn’t wrap everything up. Otherwise solid read.

Imagine someone showing up to your friend reunion with a body, and then y’all discover this man was packed and loaded for some slasher film type killing. Obviously you feel like you did the world a favor right? Well too bad his brother is now looking for him.

This was such a great premise I could even see it being a horror comedy! This however worked well.

I love stories about friend reunions gone back and this was an entertaining read/listen.

My only complain was that I had a very hard time finding any of the characters likeable. Sure, some you felt bad for but they weren’t interesting or charming. It’s hard to cheer for people you don’t care for. There was a love plot as well and I think that’s what kept me on a couples side.

I do however recommend this for a fun quick read. Thank you NetGalley for the audiobook!

I loved this twist and turns! Great plot! It was easy to relate to some of the characters and hate on some of the characters as well. Page turner for sure .

For me, this book is the definition of the word karma. It took a long time for me to get into it, but once I did I was hooked.