(3.5/5, rounded up)

Immediately after finishing I knew this would be one I'd want to sit with before reviewing fully...

But in the meantime, some misc thoughts

- definitely a specific audience, and outside of that idk if you'd enjoy
- if you/your school didn't experience a student's tragic death, this won't be as poignant. truthfully you likely won't get out this everything that you could from this, had you lost someone in HS. what weird concept, having a "leg up" so to speak, because you have an understanding that will actually help you identify <i>more</i> w this novel.
- the middle really lost me, a major lull that i'm not sure I would have worked past had this not been for NG - which is unfortunate because in the end I did get a lot from this. I started typing out that I hope others don't do that... But if this isn't for you, it just isn't for you. You'll know if this is something relatable or not fairly quickly.

Again, I'm definitely coming back to organize and add to this, but for now...

{Thank you bunches to NetGalley, Jeremy Gordon and Harper Perennial for the DRC in exchange for my honest review!}

ight now this is a 3.5 but I have a feeling I’ll be thinking about it for a while and maybe that makes it a 4?

The story, overall, felt a bis disjointed to me- The back and forth between present day, some time earlier, some time a bit earlier than that and the past all told through the the storytelling device of Jacob’s job stressors felt a bit belabored.

Even still, the writing was beautiful, made me a bit introspective, and positioned grief as a lens in which we see ourselves; how the absence of someone might blur the lines of who we were and who we are.

There was also a lot that was relatable as a millennial that also felt smart and it was interesting to see it crystallized on a page and to think like, “yeah, I’ve that thought before too.”

TY NetGalley for the ARC - looking forward to talking about this one with friends once it’s out.

The book puts a stake in an intelligent position that seems well suited for the millennial generation—that social media has only served to detach us from true friendships, substituting the commodity of surface connection for the vulnerability of actual intimacy. Additionally, it maps out relationships in a literal timeline, allowing us to retrace them, but also leaving so little separation from our pasts that it challenges emotional growth.

Gordon has given us a narrator that we can trust to probe this subject with sensitivity even as his actions may belie ethics. Jacob is rehashing his relationship with Seth for career reasons, but also to resolve some sense of dissatisfaction with how his friend’s life ended. He lays out enough of this for us with a believable earnestness that makes the story ring true.

A large problem with the book is that its concept automatically installs a narrative distance: we hear so much about Seth through these mildly disinterested characters, former classmates who are pressed (through interviews) to remember him. It ends up being a very talky story with little action that would at least alter the pace. And not having the story in front of us, so to speak, creates a lack of immediacy that removes us from any investment in the resolution.

This book is a profound examination of how grief shapes memory and vice versa; it's also about friendship and personal fulfillment and connection in a post-internet world, but it's memory that shapes both the crux of the story and the reader's experience of it. At alternating moments throughout the story, you will pity Jacob, you will roll your eyes at him, and you will also see yourself in him; you will be mad about it and also grateful that someone else understands these things that feel inarticulable most of the time. See Friendship is a singular novel that, to lean entirely on cliche, will stay with you for a very long time after it's over.