{"id":1614346,"date":"2023-07-06T23:21:21","date_gmt":"2023-07-07T03:21:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/divine.ca\/?p=1614346"},"modified":"2023-07-06T23:21:21","modified_gmt":"2023-07-07T03:21:21","slug":"divine-reads-friends-like-these-by-meg-rosoff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/divine.ca\/en\/divine-reads-friends-like-these-by-meg-rosoff\/","title":{"rendered":"DIVINE Reads: Friends Like These by Meg Rosoff"},"content":{"rendered":"

Friends Like These<\/em> \u2013 About the Book<\/h2>\n

New York City. Summer 1983. A summer internship in New York was meant to be everything Beth wanted. But from the moment she arrives in the city she feels wrong: wrong hair, terrible clothes, defective smile, too obviously a virgin. Sharing a hot, cockroach-filled apartment with a couple falling out of love completes the dream picture. Then she meets her fellow interns: ambitious out-of-towner Dan, preppy rich boy Oliver, and Edie \u2014 a beautiful, brittle, magnetic, instant best friend. Irresistible people are like gravity. You can\u2019t help being pulled towards them \u2014 can you?<\/p>\n

The Review<\/a><\/h2>\n

Friends Like These<\/em><\/a> by Meg Rosoff is a Young Adult book, but don\u2019t let that stop you from reading it. It is a [mostly] well-developed story of a young woman\u2019s first summer away from her family in New York City. There is grit in the form of her initial cockroach-infested apartment along with the sweltering heat that almost becomes a metaphor for the friendship that the main character, Beth has with her best friend of the summer, Edie.<\/p>\n

The book focuses mainly on the development of this friendship. Beth\u2019s uncertainty of not originally being a New Yorker and Edie\u2019s narcissism make for an interesting contrast. You will initially love Edie\u2019s antics and how she \u201csaves\u201d Beth from her seemingly difficult existence in the sweltering apartment that she first moves into. You will then see a shift in their relationship and how, perhaps, that first best friend may not have your best interests in mind at all.<\/p>\n

The visual writing really gives you a sense of what New York in 1983 must have been like, and Rosoff\u2019s writing really captures the essence of the time touching on issues like crime and AIDS. You also see an evolution in Beth due to every experience that she encounters, both good and bad, during her time in the city. The child of Holocaust survivors, but not having a deep knowledge of her own parents\u2019 suffering, makes this coming-of-age tale particularly poignant.<\/p>\n

The characters in Friends Like These\u00a0<\/em>may be young, but you can see very adult themes in the story. It\u2019s relatable whether showcasing the life-cycle of an exciting friendship or capturing the excitement and uncertainty of the first steps in a career. Some of the characters aren\u2019t as fully developed as they could be, but overall, the book is ideal for the hot days of summer. Friends Like These<\/em> is a very fast, enjoyable read and we highly recommend it for all ages.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Friends Like These \u2013 About the Book New York City. Summer 1983. A summer internship in New York was meant to be everything Beth wanted. But from the moment she…<\/div>\n
View Post<\/span><\/i><\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":1614348,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7948,14],"tags":[13178,3764,989,13479,13480,13481,13482,186,4714],"powerkit_post_featured":[2,10391],"class_list":["post-1614346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-books","category-reviews","tag-2023-book-releases","tag-best-sellers","tag-book-club","tag-friends-like-these","tag-friends-like-these-book","tag-friends-like-these-by-meg-rosoff","tag-meg-rosoff","tag-novels","tag-summer-reads"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/divine.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1614346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/divine.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/divine.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/divine.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/divine.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1614346"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/divine.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1614346\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1614352,"href":"https:\/\/divine.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1614346\/revisions\/1614352"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/divine.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1614348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/divine.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1614346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/divine.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1614346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/divine.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1614346"},{"taxonomy":"powerkit_post_featured","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/divine.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/powerkit_post_featured?post=1614346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}