The Story of Our Lives
By Helen Warner
Publisher: Harlequin / Graydon House
Release Date: February 13, 2018
Release Date: February 13, 2018
Reviewed by Janga




Sophie, Melissa, Amy, and Emily meet their
first year as university students in London and establish a friendship that
endures across two decades as they grow from girls to mature women, sharing
their lives and supporting one another through triumphs and tragedies, through
life with good men and with jerks and worse. As is common in women’s
fiction—and perhaps to some degree in life--each character is a distinct type.
Sophie, the center of the group, meets the love of her life at an early age,
enjoys success in her career, and is the most stable of the foursome. Melissa,
the child of divorced parents who have second families, is a lost girl and
something of a wild child. Amy begins as an effervescent optimist and seems set
for a fairy-tale life when she marries a rich, handsome, devoted man, but the
darkness beneath the perfect surface almost destroys her. Emily, the most
intellectual and the most reserved, becomes pregnant just before she graduates.
The identity of her son’s father remains a secret until late in the novel.
The story opens in 1997 when the
women, twenty-five at the time, gather for a girls’ weekend. Sophie, living
with the boyfriend whom she met the same year she met the other women, is
excited about her career in television production but is wondering if steady
Steve, who seems boring when compared to her male colleagues, is really right
for her. Melissa, who works in the music industry, is drinking too much and
hooking up indiscriminately. Amy has met her Prince Charming and announces her
engagement. Emily is a devoted mother, rearing her young son Jack alone, with
help from her loving parents.
Over the next fifteen years, the friends
share each other’s lives through marriages, motherhood, postpartum depression,
miscarriage, infidelity, addiction, and domestic abuse. Their annual reunion is
sacrosanct, and as they grow more affluent, so do the sites where they gather.
Their holidays include time in Ireland, Sophie’s native soil, and Los Angeles,
where Melissa’s work takes her. Their love can be tough when necessary; they
band together to call Melissa on her self-destructive habits and to save Amy
from the marriage that is destroying her. But when another looming tragedy
forces Emily to reveal her son’s father at last, the truth may shatter the bonds
of their long friendship.
The Story of Our
Lives is
a well-written novel that falls somewhere between chick lit and women’s fiction,
probably closer to the former. Sophie, Melissa, Amy, and Emily are flawed but
generally likeable characters. Their romantic lives are a substantial enough
part of their story that romance readers will likely enjoy the book. I found
Sophie the most appealing of the four friends, and I adored her boyfriend,
later husband Steve, a classic beta hero. And the ending will certainly please
romance readers. Warner prefaces each chapter with a snippet of headline news
from the real world, a strategy that allows the reader to see the lives of the
four women within the contexts of a larger world of tragedy, scandal, and hope.
If you like chick lit/ women’s fiction,
particularly with an English accent, I think you will find this book a
rewarding, entertaining read.
Sounds good.
ReplyDeleteSounds interesting.
ReplyDeleteSounds like a really good story.
ReplyDelete