Friday Night With The Girls

I'm a great fan of Shari Low but I have to say I found this very confusing at first. Lou, Lizzie and Ginger have been BFFs for ever. As they have grown up they have gone in different ways but they remain close friends. The book opens in present-day 2008, the women are drinking in a swanky hotel bar in Glasgow to celebrate their thirtieth birthdays - but there's obviously something momentous happening very shortly which they aren't going to think about. The book flips back and forth between 2008 and the friends' pasts, reminding them of momentous occasions, the ups and downs of life, marriage, careers, children and love. It's a trip down memory lane as each trip back in time reminds the reader of the music, TV, and fashions of the time. The trouble with flipping back and forth between present day and the past is that the story doesn't grow organically and the reader just gets vignettes, which because the women are reminiscing, are fairly important occasions - what I'm trying to say is there isn't much cleaning the house, school-run mundanity it's all key memories stuff. Anyway, I liked it but I didn't love it.