Friends Like These

by Meg Rosoff

Overview

From bestselling, award-winning author Meg Rosoff comes a gritty, intoxicating novel about a summer of unforgettable firsts: of independence, lies, love and the inevitable loss of innocence. Sharp and irresistible, it's perfect for fans of Judy Blume's Summer Sisters and Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend.

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 — a beautiful, brittle, magnetic, instant best friend. Irresistible people are like gravity. You can’t help being pulled towards them — can you?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781774881101
Publisher:	Tundra Book Group
Publication date:	05/30/2023
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	622,581
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.70(h) x 0.90(d)
Lexile:	HL700L (what's this?)
Age Range:	14 - 17 Years

About the Author

MEG ROSOFF grew up in a suburb of Boston and moved to London in 1989. She spent fifteen years working in advertising before writing her first YA novel, How I Live Now, which has sold more than a million copies in thirty-six territories. It won the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize and the Michael L. Printz Award in the US and was made into a feature film. Her subsequent nine novels have been awarded or shortlisted for, among others, the Carnegie Medal and the National Book Award. She lives in London with her husband, the painter Paul Hamlyn.

Editorial Reviews

03/27/2023

Rosoff (The Great Golden) offers a heady exploration of mental health, first love, and fierce female friendships in this atmospheric read. It’s 1983, and 17-year-old Beth has just arrived in New York City from Providence, R.I. Having broken a story revealing that her high school was denying students admission based on religion and race, she’s now spending the summer before college interning at a major N.Y.C. publication, and is both intimidated and exhilarated by the opportunity. There, she befriends fellow intern Edie, a savvy native New Yorker who takes medication for her self-described “neurotic complex.” Even as she finds her footing in her internship, Beth feels out of place (“Wrong hair, wrong shoes, wrong way of standing.... All wrong”). But Edie helps her settle into her new life and, together, the white and Jewish teens make themselves indispensable at the paper, update Beth’s limited wardrobe, and bask in the air conditioning of Edie’s family’s apartment. Everything feels like a dream until Edie begins acting strangely, prompting rapid change in their friendship. Through the girls’ intense and complicated relationship, Rosoff depicts a rousing tale that centers an ambitious yet insecure teenager learning to take control of her life and desires. Ages 14–up. Agent: Zoë Pagnamenta, Zoë Pagnamenta Agency. (May)

Publishers Weekly

One of Audible Canada's Best of 2023

PRAISE FOR Friends Like These:

"Rosoff evokes an unbearably hot summer in Manhattan with sidewalk-melting intensity, not skimping on gritty period detail, conveyed in a tabloid tone from the very first page. . . . Readers who remember the 1980s will enjoy this edgy tale of lost innocence as much as new adults." —Kirkus Reviews

"Through [Beth and Edie's] intense and complicated relationship, Rosoff depicts a rousing tale that centers an ambitious yet insecure teenager learning to take control of her life and desires." —Publishers Weekly

"A quick read that will delight readers dreaming of a New York City adventure for themselves." —Booklist

"Rosoff, always incredibly adept with her creation of characters and storylines, excels once again." —Youth Services Book Review

From the Publisher

2023-03-14
An instant friendship between summer interns in 1983 New York veers into rough waters.

“I like the way you never speak before thinking,” says Edie to her new best friend, Beth, who for once is able to deliver a snappy reply: “I like the way you never think before speaking.” The girls, both recent high school graduates, are otherwise opposites: Beth has come to New York City from nowheresville with little money and even less self-confidence, while Edie is the epitome of Manhattan wealth and cool. They join two boys, ultracompetitive Dan and preppy Oliver, in the bustling offices of a daily newspaper. As much as Beth absorbs about journalism from this coveted post, she will learn even more from her sophisticated new friend—and roommate, after Edie rescues her from a cockroach-infested tenement downtown. Rosoff evokes an unbearably hot summer in Manhattan with sidewalk-melting intensity, not skimping on gritty period detail, conveyed in a tabloid tone from the very first page: “Muggers mugged. Junkies jacked up. Pickpockets picked pockets. Flashers flashed, rapists raped and perverts perved. Psycho bag ladies shouted obscenities at miscellaneous crazies. You could get shot just for being in the path of a bullet. AIDS knew where you lived.” Beth, the granddaughter of four Holocaust victims, may be unworldly, but her sensitivity and her moral clarity give her a grounding her loose-cannon friend Edie sorely lacks. The book follows a White default.

Readers who remember the 1980s will enjoy this edgy tale of lost innocence as much as new adults. (content note) (Fiction. 16-adult)

Kirkus Reviews