4-4.5⭐️ When two families reunite for a birthday celebration weekend, a shocking event will rock these long-held friendships, and marriages, to the core.

Right off the bat, this book reminded me quite a bit of The Heart of Winter by Jonathan Evison, both in content and format. And then..it veered. While The Heart of Winter is hopeful and romantic, Among Friends is gritty and biting. It’s slow and evocative, but before you know it, there are twists and turns that will have you on the edge of your seat— something not at all common in a work of literary fiction. It is simultaneously beautiful and uncomfortable, steeped in eloquent prose and set in the most picturesque of places. A quick read, with very short chapters, you will find yourself unable to put this one down— at least I couldn’t.

🎧 The audiobook is narrated by one of my faves, Rebecca Lowman, and is absolute perfection. I recommend both formats, but if you enjoy reading via audio, this is for sure the way to go.

Read if you like:
friendship fiction
character-driven stories
dual timelines and POVs
debut novels

Thank you Riverhead Books and PRH Audio for the advanced copies.

This book practically simmers with tension throughout the entire novel until its unforgettable ending. The writing is crisp and clear, the characters complicated and messy. Among Friends would make an excellent book club choice as there is much to discuss!

Ebbott blew me away as a debut author. I was looking forward to reading Among Friends and was thrilled to see it in me NetGalley library. Not everyone is lucky enough to have lifelong friends. Those who do realize how lucky the are and how precious that relationship is. This book explores the value that is placed upon it and the trust the two families have built up between them and have in each other.
Amos and Emerson were friends in college and while vastly different, their personalities compliment each other. As they’ve aged, instead of going their separate ways their families have become closely entwined. Like all families tensions arise with teen daughters and their parents as well as husbands and wives. Ebbotts characters are fully fleshed out.
When there is a situation of sexual assault the question arises of who to believe. Also what would each person be giving up by aligning with one side or the other. The answers are surprising. 5 stars and I heartily recommend this to everyone.
Thank you NetGalley for this amazing ARC and another thanks to Riverhead books for the opportunity to read it. These opinions are my own.

Among Friends by Hal Ebbott is a hard book to like. The narrative examines generational trauma, class distinctions, marriage, parenting and friendship (not necessarily in that order of importance). The characters are clearly drawn, yet because the reader is privy to their innermost thoughts, they morph from one persona to another. The point of view shifts frequently and one gets a sense of the tangle of emotions but also the confusion of whose opinion matters. The crux of the narrative concerns a “he said, she said” moment between Amos’s daughter Anna and Amos’s best friend Emerson. It is surprising that Anna’s mother feels more loyalty to Emerson than she does to her husband or her daughter (here’s where the class distinctions come into play). Amos aligns himself with his daughter while acknowledging his deep desire to pretend it never happened. One presumes that the status quo in maintained though that is left for the reader to decide.

Thank you to Netgalley and Riverhead Press for the eARC in exchange for this review.

Exposition of what happens (or doesn’t) between 2 families who have been friends for years, where the husband in one family molests the daughter in the other family. Characters are well-honed. Social issues include economic class, friendship dynamics and conflict resolution.

I can’t say that I liked this book, but reading it was an experience. Among Friends is indeed about friendship: to know, love, hate, and manipulate someone with only the familiarity a lifelong friendship allows. The writing style is interesting; the reader really has to work for the full picture. Thanks to NetGalley and Riverhead for the ARC! This would be a great book club title because I need to talk it out!

There are books you read and the next week can’t remember the name of the main character. Among Friends is the opposite. These characters get under your skin and embed themselves. Thank you, Hal Ebbott for the beautiful prose and an engaging family drama. I recommend this book to anyone who appreciates fully-developed characters that come alive on the page. Meet Amos with all his insecurities and his college roommate and best friend Emerson for whom attention is the sustenance of life. Now in their 50s the friendship has deepened and the circle expanded to include their families. How they each deal with an unfathomable betrayal of friendship that breaches societal norms ultimately reveals their true character. Does anyone come away a winner? Thank you, Riverhead, for the opportunity to review this winner!

It is a difficult book to read once you get to the part where the trust between two best friends and their families is broken. I was disappointed with how the parents handled the accusation brought by their sixteen-year-old daughter against their male friend. Well written, and characters are complex and well developed.

The writing in this is so gorgeous and unique that I don’t feel like I really need to focus on anything else. The story focuses on two best friends since college, Amos and Emerson, who are now middle-aged, with wives and teenage daughters. The group is spending the weekend together at Emerson’s house in the country. Something awful and violent occurs, which rips apart what these two men thought they knew about their friendship and their own families. Ebbott writes these two characters (who are the dual narrators) in such an interesting way - it’s clear that we’re not getting full transparency from either of them, both are unreliable in their own ways. There’s an ambiguousness to the story we’re being presented, as well. I think some people would probably find this writing pretentious and overwrought, and I’m not entirely sure I’d disagree with anyone who felt that way (it is pretentious, these characters are pretentious!), but I was so drawn in to this story via the writing. Astounded this is a debut because it feels so incredibly assured.

“Among Friends” by Hal Ebbott is a spectacular debut. It examines two families whose lives are interwoven. The two men met in college and became the kind of friends that are equal to, or closer, than kin. Then something happens that makes everyone question both their relationships to each other and their relationships with themselves. This book examines human strength and frailty, the healing and damage inherent in honesty, and the consequences of the choices we make – and those we choose to ignore. The power of this book is in the nuanced characters and moral dilemmas, as well as the exquisite writing. Sometimes there are no easy choices and no going back.

Thank you to NetGalley and Riverhead books for this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

This is a beautiful book, a story subtly told and yet so powerful. It's really masterfully done with fully realized characters, even as the writing and the scenes are relatively spare. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

A big thank you to NetGalley and Riverhead for this ARC!

Among Friends was an extremely powerful, emotionally moving read that made me want to reach into the book and either shake a character by the shoulders or take their hand and lead them as far away from their world as I could. The inability to do that left me with a pretty intense feeling of desperation, frustration, or helplessness at times. While I felt connected to certain characters through the trauma they experienced, or the glimpses into their internal monologues that were provided, I didn't feel quite as connected as I wish I was. Perhaps this is an inability of mine that came specifically with this title, but I didn't feel that the timeline jumps into the past really added any deep context to any of the characters that felt truly urgent and important. Some flashbacks added context or a fuller picture of what informed certain decisions, but I felt that there was a shroud over these two families that was never quite lifted. While I am a big believer in not demanding full transparency from books or authors or their characters, this one could've used a bit more time or context to really develop that ability to feel closeness, especially in a book that deals with such intimate, fragile topics.

I enjoyed this read, but I think I wouldn't revisit solely for the fact that these characters are ones I would have needed to spend more time with in the context of their story and circumstances. With a very tragic but realistic end, I think the frustration/sadness I felt overwhelmed my ability to see a major payoff since I wasn't made to really deeply care for many of the characters aside from the ones with the most tragic ending. Maybe I need to work on being okay with accepting this! I am all for a tragic/sad ending, this one just fell a tad short for me.

A stellar debut novel about two lifelong friends coming from distinctly different backgrounds. With an undertone of envy and power, an unspeakable act occurs that will challenge not only their friendship but their moral fiber and their personal preservation. The writing is stunning and intimate, portraying the ultimate dilemma in a truly heartbreaking outcome. Can the motivation to belong be so powerful that it eclipses the integrity of your actions. Ebbott has created a novel that questions the true motivator of acceptance.

Thanks to NetGalley and RIverhead for an early read.

Hmm. Mixed opinions here. This is an author with a distinctive voice. He’s committed to pinning down - in fine prose - the absolute essence of a thing, whether it’s a mood or the kernel of a relationship. And he’s able to achieve this, at times, with acuity and precision. It’s a rare and notable ability.
But he also likes to meander around and delay, partly to augment tension and deliver background, partly, it seemed to me, because he seemed in love with the sound of his own voice.
I found the sense of indulgence overwhelming, while also, as mentioned, notable. I craved greater restraint,, or variation in tone, so that the reader wasn’t always being crushed under the weight of this overbearing style. And yet, when it worked, it delivered such a crystalline sense of whatever it was, that I forgave.
So there it is, a small, searching story that reached heights but sometimes was insufferable. Go figure.

Engaging and immersive. A recommended first purchase for collections where literary fiction is popular.

a poignant exploration of two privileged, intertwined white families, and all the betrayals that happen when keeping up appearances, connections, and smoothing things over take precedence over truth. A surprisingly quick read. I thought the end was especially great.

Quiet, desperate white upper-middle class family drama. Two men, Emerson and Amos, are best friends in their fifties. At Emerson's 52nd birthday party, angry and feeling impotent at his sprained ankle after playing tennis, he gropes his best friend's daughter in the laundry room. The second half of the book concerns the negotiation as to what the two families will do in the aftermath of this revelation.

Unfortunately this book was pretty mid. The writing style is extremely labored, the quality of figurative language is meh and gets kind of annoying, the characters somewhat blend into one another and have the MOST sketched out backstories (the book literally begins with ONE extremely brief and non-characterizing chapter of their meeting in college before jumping to the present day, giving us very little time to understand the nature of their lifelong and supposedly deep attachment), the bond between the best friends just isn't convincing or worth emotional investment in because of the book's structure, and the characterization work isn't particularly strong. (For example, we're told that Emerson will frequently just seem cruel and the book will give an example of a cutting line of dialogue that is like, okay that wasn't great of you to say, but also not memorable or even particularly terrible. Or it'll just be like, I glanced over and i could just TELL he was not thinking nice thoughts at that moment. The book does this multiple times, and the technique doesn't really work well to deepen our understanding of the nature of Emerson's cruelty.) Additionally, the names of the wives and daughters (Sophie / Anne / Claire / Retsy) are SO similar / easily mixed up and they aren't given enough distinct personalities for this reader to remember who is which wife / daughter, and which wife / daughter belongs with which husband, until distressingly far into the book. The roving 3rd person limited PoV doesn't really help with this characterization problem either. The book begins to finally pick up steam around the 50% mark when it gets to the actual conflict, and that part of the book is certainly better, and what ultimately earns the book a 3 star rating instead of 2.

It's clear that the book is trying to raise important questions about what people do in the aftermath of sexual assault that occurs at a blurred boundary / space re: belief, and the cost of such decisions to the families involved and the way that it is easier to just ignore / smooth over such decisions. Overall though, the execution was middling, and this book was a pretty forgettable contemporary literary drama.