In her second book, Laura Tremaine again serves as a helpful guide to growing closer to and better appreciating the people in our lives! Just like her first book, “Share Your Stuff”, “The Life Council” helped me look at the friendships I have had throughout my life and better understand the important roles many of them played. And it helps me think through the kind of friend I am and want to be. Highly recommended!!

Excellent book about women's friendships and how different friends play different roles across a lifetime.

[4.5 stars]

I love Laura Tremaine's podcast 10 Things to Tell You and her debut book Share Your Stuff, I'll Go First. She's back with her sophomore book, The Life Council, which explores adult female friendships alongside memoir-style stories from her own life. She shares 10 specific types of friends and the role they play in a woman’s life. She also covers her friendship philosophy and friendship challenges and break-ups. I love the entire concept of a "Life Council" (i.e. a Board of Directors for your life) and the pressure this concept releases of every friend having to serve every role in a woman's life. Of course, the minute Laura starts getting into the 10 Life Council roles…I started slotting my own friends into spots and noticing areas that were glaringly vacant. Her discussion of friendship breakups in particular was refreshing as I feel like friendship breakups don’t get talked about enough and are often just as emotionally difficult and/or complicated as a romantic relationship breakup. I highly recommend this one on audio and it would be a perfect book club pick.

Loved this book! Really enjoyed thinking about my friendships and understanding where I need to work as a friend.

Female friendship has been featured in social media as a type of success story. Seeing women on the beach or out to dinner creates an image of adult friendship that others crave. However, statistics tell a different story. Many women long for close friendships and see the ability to cultivate them as a dream for others but not for them. Laura Tremaine's newest book, The Life Council, describes ten different types of friendships that women accumulate over a life time. These friendships serve a unique role in their lives and may not occur simultaneously. Tremaine uses her own life stories to illustrate the friendship struggles we all experience. This helps the reader examine friendships in a different light. Not all friends will be every day, share your password type of friends. However, there are important roles in our lives that past, current, and future friends will inhabit that provide a richness that we all crave. Grab this book and share it with a friend.

This book really has me thinking about friends I've had, friends I still have, and the overall meaning and definition of friends.

I enjoy Laura Tremaine's writing style, the stories about friendships she shared in the book, and I really enjoyed the Secret Tapes which were part of the pre order bonus!

I have been a longtime fan of Laura in all the forms...on the internet, her podcast, and of her first book. I would be lying if I said that I wasn't biased to think she puts out amazing content, but even with that caveat I think she knocked it out of the park with this book. The concept of the life council, the development of each of the "seats" of the council, and even her thoughtfulness to be very clear for those that may feel like their council is lacking was so well done. I could feel the genuine care that Laura took to make sure that regardless of where you were in cultivating your own friendships she did not want the book to feel alienating to only those with wonderful "besties" and a huge social circle. The chapter about the empty seat was especially well written and thoughtful.

Thank you so much Laura and team for the advanced reader copy and forgive me for the late review!

What a fabulous reflection on women’s friendships. I loved the stories she shared. Planning to buy copies for special women in my life.

For the past several year's I've been a Laura Tremaine listener and follower. Her writing style feels a lot of like listening to her podcast episodes, simply in long-format. While the book didn't present anything overly complex or new, I appreciate how she prompts you to consider your own friendship philosophies and members you would put on your own Life Council.

I particularly found 'Friendship Philosophy #1: Friendship is a To-Do' something that resonated with me. She writes "I want to be the person who does friendship organically and wholeheartedly, a person who is generous and loving...Alas, I'm actually an anxious, introverted working mother with a screen addiction...The truth is friendship is work." Which I guess is why one of the other philosophies is Believe the Best, we are all just trying to do our best and I must remember that.

Overall, I would recommend this book to those who are looking for friendship, repairing friendship, or wanting to strengthen their friendships.

I received access to a digital ARC after preordering the book and being part of Laura's Secret Stuff patreon.

I didn't think it was possible for me to love Laura's second book more than her first, but it absolutely is. This captured so much off the beauty and difficulty of friendship, and I'm so grateful for it.

The Life Council was everything I was hoping it would be. Laura Tremaine has such a great perspective on friendship. Instead of a few people being THE FRIEND, she breaks down the types of friends she’s had or wants to have in her life. It’s such a great way to look at it. I enjoyed spending time reflecting on the different roles my friends play in my life and what is it I need.

Also, if 10 friends feels intimidating to you, know that she isn’t telling you to have all of them at once or even these specific types of friends. Rather, she is explaining what belies she has around friendship and how it plays out. She encourages the reader to examine their own values and determine what they need and why they have the friends they do.

If you want a refreshing look at friendships by someone who values them, this is the book for you. I listened on audiobook as it feels more personal to hear Laura read it to me. I also bought the book so I could underline and annotate. Both ways are great.

Laura is so vulnerable about her friendships which made this book really accessible and valuable. I love how she breaks down friendship philosophy and how to find friends in addition to the members of the life council.

This book is for women seeking friendship or struggling with friendships or maybe needing to end / change them. I love the various types of friends as well as reading about the women that hold these seats in her life. What a love story to these women.

I can see myself rereading this at various phases of life when questioning my friendships, needing advice or just wanting to be among women who lift up other women.

I‘m already a fan of Laura Tremaine and her podcast 10 Things To Tell You so it was kind of a given I’d love this book. Even so, it blew me away. Dare I say I liked this one even better than her first book! I highlighted so many passages on my e-reader and will absolutely be reading this one again. Laura gives us permission to dive deep into friendship and provides language to talk about the roles friends play in our lives.

Laura is vulnerable about her own friendship struggles and missteps to get the conversation started. Reading about how she came through loneliness and friendship challenges was inspiring. Throughout the book she also challenges some of society’s preconceived notions about friendship and relationships. She points out the obvious that just isn’t discussed – friendship takes work just like all other relationships. We know marriage and romantic partnerships, work relationships, family relationships, etc. take work to be successful and fulfilling, but somehow friendship is supposed to come to us naturally. Laura shares her own tools for prioritizing friendship and is honest about the work it takes to make and keep friends.

Most of us can probably remember our own friendship missteps and may prefer not to think about those times, but Laura shows us how much we can learn from those mistakes to improve ourselves and our friendships. She also gives us permission to value all kinds of friendships and not just the one “best friend” we think we should have our whole life. Not every friendship or interaction has to be deep or long lasting to be meaningful. I love how Laura talks about different types of friends and gives examples of each from her own life.

This book walks through ten examples of friends who may be on our “Life Council” now, in the past or in the future. It got me thinking a lot about the type of friends I have in my life and those I may want to cultivate to sit on my own personal Life Council. For a while I’ve even said I don’t need any more friends, but Laura gently showed me in this book how I may have closed a door that is best kept open. Friends may show up when we least expect them, but only if we remain open and willing to welcome them. I’ve continued thinking a lot about friends I’ve had throughout the course of my life since I finished reading this book. There were those who helped me through a season and those who shaped who I am today even if we aren’t in touch anymore. It has been a joy to reminisce about those friendships.

I highly recommend this to anyone who enjoys reading about friendship; wants inspiration or guidance around making and keeping friends; or enjoys memoirs, essays, and nonfiction. There’s something for everyone in this book!

Following Laura’s writing and podcasting for awhile, listening to this book felt just like a friend talking to me about friendship. She tells her stories so we can see ourselves, too. Now to go back and read with a pencil, to reflect on my own friendships and life council. I can’t wait to put this is the hands of my soul sisters.

Laura Tremaine’s newest book takes a look at the different types of friends that we have in our lives. Each friend can play one specific role (or, hold a specific seat), and that is okay. Laura has taught me that it is acceptable, and even preferable, for me to enjoy my friendships for what they each bring to the table—rather than expecting each friendship to always be all of the things.

The most profound lesson that I have learned from this book is that none of my friends have to fill ALL the seats in my Life Council. This realization has encouraged me to really look at the friendships that I already have and to consider those that may not yet exist.

I love all of Laura's work! Great thoughts on friendship and not only the roles others play in our lives, but the way we can improve on our role in the life of others.

The Life Council by Laura Tremaine--In this new release, writer and podcaster Laura Tremaine examines 10 different types of friendships that we may have throughout our lives. She reflects on the friends in her life that have filled each of the categories and provides some gentle suggestions on finding these friends in your own life. There is a nice reading guide at the end that would be great for book club discussions. You can sense how important Tremaine feels friendships are, particularly for women in our modern days. I started reading this book as an ARC provided by the publisher and NetGalley and finished it today with the Kindle copy I purchased myself.

I really enjoyed the book and Laura's style of writing. I resonated with all of the friend types that were on her life council and immediately reached out to some friends I haven't been as good about reaching out to. I recognized myself on the pages of the Yes Friend and mourned the losses of some of my Daily Duty Friends as a biproduct of the pandemic and also my old friends and soul sisters I have lost through death. It is important to have a board of directors in your life. If we continue to live in a vaccumm with all the same types of people then it would be very difficult to grow. I am looking forward to attending the book club on this and have already preordered copies of this book to give to some of my good friends. Friendship struggles are real as an adult but this book had just the right perspective to help identify and cultivate those relationships we need in our lives.

This is the book about friendship that you didn’t know you needed. I say that from experience because I didn’t know I needed it.

Divided into three parts, the author covers philosophies to help us be good friends, types of friends and thoughts on how we make, keep and change friends as adults. As she says, the Friendship Fairy doesn’t exist and we don’t have the ease of connection as we did in our youth.

A quick, uncomplicated read, I believe we can all learn something about friendship from this book. For me, I’m forgiving myself for friendships that didn’t last as long as I hoped they would. No one is at fault and I no longer need to carry the loss. Also, I’m giving myself a bunch of friendship to dos. Friends I want to send this book to and friends I want to thank for their friendship to ensure they know how much they mean to me.

You will thank yourself if you read this book. And if you enjoy it, do yourself a favor and check out the author’s podcast, 10 Things To Tell You. I think you will enjoy it as well.

Laura is such a great writer, I will read everything she puts into the world. She gives such perfect language to friendships roles and dynamics and helped me to think about what I want/need in friendships moving forward.