Review: City of Friends

City of Friends by Joanna Trollope
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The day Stacey Grant loses her job feels like the last day of her life. Or at least, the only life she'd ever known. For who was she if not a City high-flyer, Senior Partner at one of the top private equity firms in London? As Stacey starts to reconcile her old life with the new—one without professional achievements or meetings, but instead, long days at home with her dog and ailing mother, waiting for her successful husband to come home—she at least has The Girls to fall back on. Beth, Melissa and Gaby. The girls, now women, had been best friends from the early days of university right through their working lives, and through all the happiness and heartbreaks in between. But these career women all have personal problems of their own, and when Stacey's redundancy forces a betrayal to emerge that was supposed to remain secret, their long cherished friendships will be pushed to their limits.
 
I like the way Trollope takes ordinary lives and makes them interesting. There are no sensational events just real life events: redundancy, coping with an elderly parent, coping as a single mother, relationship problems and more, woven into this story centred around four women who met at university and stayed friends. Now in their fortys these women are facing issues that many of us face and Trollope brings them to life in her book.

Another thing I like about Trollope is that she doesn't feel the need to tie everything up by the end of the book. I hate the way some authors want all loose ends tied up neatly, but often unrealistically, by the last page and Trollope doesn't do that. Real life doesn't do it either.

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