Amy Spalding is a great author. I have read almost all of her lighter, romantic comedies such as Kissing Ted Callaghan (2015) and The Reese Malcolm List (2013), and always enjoyed her fully developed characters and those awkward but often hilarious scenarios that were easy to relate to. Her latest novel We Used to Be Friends, takes a more serious approach to what is often treated as a sub-plot in many YA contemporaries—the friendship between two teenage girls.

James and Kat have been friends forever. But it’s easy to see right from the start, that they are very different people—James is a runner, introverted committed to her five-year plan. Kat is outgoing, popular, living day to day. Her mother died a few years back and her older brother is now away at college, and she just wants the best senior year experience she can have. James, an only child, is the offspring of high school sweethearts and as we start the novel, everything is about to unravel.

We read Kat’s story from the beginning of senior year, right through to leaving home for college. Arriving home after summer break, Kat’s boyfriend confesses to cheating on her ‘because (he) was bored’… and …’it meant nothing’… Dumping him will result in huge changes, including meeting a vivacious girl (so, actually I am bi? Okay then), changing lunch tables and broadening her social circle.

But before we meet Kat, we hear James’s narrative voice. And she begins at the end. She is about to head off to her chosen college, her friendship with Kat is over, and as she leaves her house with her father, she asks if they can drop in to visit mum before we go… what the? It’s all topsy‑turvey. And from there, alternately, we are with Kat as she moves forward to the end of senior year and move backwards with James to the beginning.

I felt more sympathy towards James’s plight, but feel I received more information about Kat’s. Clearly the backwards timeline didn’t satisfy as much especially because there’s a strong sense of anxiety growing as we get closer to the disaster that occurs to completely overwhelm her. Kat’s acceptance of her true sexual orientation and of the new woman in his father’s life never feel as tumultuous as James’s situation. As well, as is reflective of James’s nature, her voice is starker, more direct and not as emotional. Whereas Kat shares and shares (and shares).

There are many gaps in a narrative like this, which I very much appreciate and admire. It’s the author’s skill that allows readers to follow the threads and fill in spaces, and I like a book that keeps me actively engaged. While some might not want to work that hard, rewards are there for people who persist. Of course, my bug bear is again on display—a book like this is much better as a print copy. I wanted to flick back through James’s section when I finally reached Kat’s versions, and sometimes it was impossible to find the corresponding bit (Did James talk about prom? It’s a crucial element of Kat realising how far she and James had lost their way, and I wanted to review James’s input, and no amount of searching took me there).

Thanks to Netgalley and publisher for this advanced copy. Highly recommended for readers who want more depth about non-romantic relationships. While both girls’ love interests play a part, the focus is on the breakdown of James and Kat’s inability to reach out to each other when their own world view shifts significantly. It’s a mature read, with discussions about sex and underage drinking at parties. Bisexuality is representative positively, and diversity is strong and convincing. We Used to be Friends is released in the US on January 7. I hope we see it here in Australia soon.

I really liked this book, it was so interesting to read! It took me a second to get used to the timelines flipping, but once I did, I really loved the lay out! Great story and great writing.

I liked this, I liked the way it was told both backwards in time and forwards in time. I liked Jamest best

It is often said that friendship break-ups can be harder than romantic ones, that the loss of a friend whom you considered would forever be a part of your life is more earth shattering than one might expect. And yet we so rarely discuss friendships ending in media at any great length, hardly examine it beyond the surface. So, I'm beyond thrilled this book exists in the world and I hope it helps start a new trend in books for all ages. Spalding handles the subject deftly, with heart and humor.

"By the time you realize you're thirsty, it's too late. You're already dehydrated. Therefore, it stands to reasons that if you feel the end coming, you're already there."
This was such a bittersweet book - in the best way. I just feel really sad and filled with pain about this friendship that just falls apart over time. It definitely hooks you and pulls you into the story. You're so invested you feel the heartbrea and pain alongside Kat and James.

I loved that this story was told in two timelines. From James, we go backward from graduation to the beginning of senior year. We know all that she's been through (and kept secret) throughout the year and how much it's weighed on her. From Kat, we go forward and we see her grow into herself and a new relationship with Quinn as she discovers that she's bisexual.

The story just felt so real and raw. Neither James nor Kat were the perfect friend - James internalized all of her problems, and Kat was kinda self absorbed - but to see them just fall apart hurts in a specific way. It's this settled discomfort and loss that doesn't quite go away and Amy Spalding captured it perfectly.

I enjoyed this book, the storyline and characterisations were effective and realistic. I didn't overly enjoy the way the story was presented, with one character's story going backwards and the other forwards, I think telling the story from two different voices would have been enough to satisfy me and keep me interested in the story. I would be interested in reading the book in chronological order if it were ever to be published that way. I genuinely feel that good storytelling does not need to engage in 'high concept' gimmicks like this - and this story and the writing are both strong enough to stand on their own.

I thought the concept and content of the book were really beautiful but I just struggled with the duel perspective

I found it extremely hard to keep up with the characters in this book. It would go back and forth between the characters and to me, I had a hard time keeping them apart. I did like the way that backstory was given though for the reason why the ending happened. You knew kind of what was going to happen but didn't know why.

Amy Spalding's previous novel - The Summer of Jordi Perez - was in my top 3 reads of 2018, so I was super excited to be able to read her new novel in advance of publication. Sadly, I think I went in expecting too much and ended up being disappointed. Not by the writing, which was reliably brilliant, but the narrative style (dual narratives with a disjointed timeline moving back and forward across protagonists James' and Kat's senior year), which made it difficult to connect with the characters or to keep track of what happened, when. Both James and Kat came across as fairly spoiled and mean girl (for example, both insist that they're not part of the popular crowd... oh they sit at a lunch table with all the sports stars and go to all the parties and date hot guys and run for homecoming queen but yeah, totally not popular. Their tone deaf refusal to check their privilege grated), which made it difficult to really invest in their stories.

I really enjoyed this novel! It dealt with a topic that I haven't really read anything about, and something I think is very relatable, the breakup of a friendship. I feel like that is such an intensely relatable topic and I'm surprised that there isn't more literature dedicated to. In this book, we follow James and Kat as they move through their senior year. They are both inseparable and have been friends since kindergarten. They have been their for each other through thick and thin, but something changes in their final year of high school that tears the fabric of their friendship and causes both girls to see each other in a new light.

I really loved the way in which this story was told via the dual timelines. I thought that the fact that James' was moving backwards and Kat's moving forwards through time was really unique and well executed. There were times where I got the timelines mixed up and was left a little confused, but overall it created a very intersting story. Going into the book, you know the girls will no longer be friends by the end, but I really appreciated the subtleties of how that played out. This book takes a look at how friendships, people, and perspective change as we grow up, and that naturally, people just grow apart. It was all done in a very realistic way, and I couldn't help but feel for the characters.

Speaking of characters, I really appreciated the realistic personalities and actions of all the characters in the book. James and Kat were very much foils of each other, which made their friendship and eventual breakup that much more intersting. I found myself liking James' character more. I appreciated her quiet determination and resourcefulness, though her 15 year plan was a bit much. I understood why she was upset and how her perspective changed through the year. I can't say, on the other hand, that I was a big fan of Kat. She seemed very self-obsessed and immature, but I think that was the point of her character. The author wrote both character's emotions and reactions to the things going on in their life very well and it all felt very realistic.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book! I though the topic was unique but so relatable and I hope I can find more books about it.

What is great about this story is that there are no villains. Amy Spalding expertly taps into the complexities of teenage friendships and provides the reader with two protagonists who are both equally right and equally wrong. I love that more than anything it is a story about friendship and the point of contention isn't a boy or a love triangle issues related to the two girls in the friendship and how they relate to each other. As much as I liked the intertwining timelines, at times it was difficult to keep the order of events in minds, which might have been part of not rooting for one character over another.

One thing I do struggle with, though, is storylines in which everything, or most things, could have been solved with the characters just talking to each other. But maybe that's part of the genius of the book, the frustration in the characters ability to just have a conversation and clear up all the misunderstandings.

It's a promising debut and I happily anticipate more from Amy Spalding.

LIKES:
What caught my attention about this book was its promise of contemporary cuteness and relatively light-hearted content about two best friends and conflict between them. I am happy to say that it definitely delivered on that promise: I read this book in a breeze. It gave me a breather from the highly complex fantasies I was reading at the time.

This book is all about the pain and discomfort that comes with growing up and evolving. Our two main characters Kat and James are childhood best friends and practically tied at the hip until the end of junior year/beginning of senior year of high school comes, and aspects of their lives begin pulling them in two different ways.

The central conflicts of this book are very true to adolescence: Fights. Breakups. Underage drinking. Popularity/being a shadow of your popular best friend. College decisions. Etc.

However, not all of the conflicts of this book are juvenile, and there are a few very important conversations that can be had about this book:

#1: The Paramount Nature of Communication in ALL Relationships
When we talk about communication issues in relationships, we usually are talking about them in the context of romantic relationships. However, this book is a reminder that clear communication should be present in both romantic and platonic relationships. If I remember one thing from my interpersonal communications class I took last year, I remember the types of logical fallacies that we often fall into during heated arguments. James, 1/2 of our main character duo, often falls into the fallacy of should when it comes to her expectations of Kat. James expects Kat to read her mind and instantly know what is going on inside of it. But as we all know, no one can read minds. Not your girlfriend/boyfriend/partner. Not even your best friend. The only way for a problem to be resolved is to talk it out, and We Used to Be Friends demonstrates this perfectly.

#2: Parental Death, Divorce, and Moving On
I was really surprised to see the amount of careful attention given to the topic of the death of a parent and how it forever alters the structure of a family in this book. Be aware that if this is a soft spot for you, it may be hard to read. That said, it may also be incredibly comforting and healing to see how Kat traverses her life without her mom around. And with the absence of a parent and a great amount of time and healing past, eventually, some parents may choose to move on. Kat experiences on-page confliction of her feelings about her dad's choice to move on, and I found that very necessary to her character arc. I enjoyed experiencing the development of her opinions on the matter, including her worrying about erasing/replacing her mom and her ultimate relationship with her new stepmom.

#3: The Fallacy of Causation
The final conversation I think We Used to Be Friends was an excellent launch pad for is avoiding the fallacy of causation in all—but especially—in romantic relationships. The fallacy of causation basically means that a person is in a mindset that they should not do or say anything that would cause someone to have a negative reaction. If I may expose myself for a moment, I relate to this fallacy hardcore and I am always working on avoiding it myself.

DISLIKES:
Even though We Used to Be Friends had a few good conversations in it, everything outside of those conversations left me feeling so incredibly frustrated with our characters and their plotlines. I found myself skimming and skipping pages of overly-dramatized problems they were facing that I simply didn't have the patience to read. As I said before, most of this book feels very juvenile, and I frequently found myself asking, "really? We're going to be upset about this trivial detail now?"

Additionally, the character cast of this book is very archetypal: Kat is insanely popular, James is ridiculously smart (I'm talking this girl has a 15-year-plan smart), Quinn is a boyish lesbian, Logan is the college boyfriend, etc. These characters were nearly nothing outside of the boundaries of their archetype, which made them feel really 2D (with the exception of Kat. She's probably the most developed character of the book).

In all, while I thoroughly enjoyed analyzing the conversations of this book, everything else felt very disappointing. I can refer people to this book for these conversations if needed, but outside of that, I can't say that this is a book I will reread.

I am a relatively lucky person. I have never broken a bone; the people in my life who have passed away have been old and have lived very full lives. However, there is one thing that I have been through and the pain of it is something that nearly a decade later I still feel the pain pangs of now. Not as much, they have softened over time but the pain of falling out with your best friend is something that I fail to be able to describe.

It is for that reason alone I am thankful for books like We Used to Be Friends. Amy Spalding shows just how painful a friendship break up can be. In some ways, it is worse than breaking up with a boyfriend because you just expect that your best friend will be there for you. In the story of James and Kat we see the story from two different perspectives and also two different timelines - one going forwards, the other going backwards – and we watch the actions of both of the characters and see how both are in pain but both are at fault. We see these two young women on the cusp of adulthood going into the unknown without their confidant. A scary time already made even more terrifying without the person you rely on most.

I really enjoyed We Used to Be Friends. I did feel that Spalding favoured James as a character and gave Kat some very annoying qualities (like, duh!) but overall, I felt that Spalding portrayed the hurt and confusion in a very realistic way. We can see what both did wrong and maybe it will encourage those who read it to act differently in their friendship groups.

We Used To Be Friends by Amy Spalding is available now.

For more information regarding Amy Spalding (@theames) please visit www.theamyspalding.com.

For more information regarding ABRAMS Kids (@abramskids) please visit www.abramsbooks.com.

Whilst I really do enjoy books about female friendships, I found this one too muddled and over-long to be really enjoyable.

James and Kat were best friends - but they're not any more. The story is told in different timelines but honestly the timeline jumped about so much that even though each chapter said when it was set, I still had trouble remembering who was dating who or friends with who at that point in time. It went on for too long, and there was no real resolution.

This book tells a story that isn't mentioned much in YA. So often we see stories of girls who have been best friends forever, and their friendships stay consistent throughout high school and into college, with maybe a fight or two sprinkled in. I'm glad those kinds of positive friendships are so present in YA, but they aren't a reality for a lot of teens. For so many teens, friendships fizzle out and don't make it past high school or college. This reality of friendships isn't represented much in YA at all, and I wish it was. WE USED TO BE FRIENDS is a great representation of this kind of friendship.

WE USED TO BE FRIENDS tells the story of James and Kat, two girls who have been best friends since Kindergarten. James is athletic and more reserved, and Kat is more outgoing and social. We really got a good sense of who Kat and James were as characters through interactions with their families and their other friends/significant others, but I wish we had gotten more scenes with Kat and James as best friends. This book really focuses on the fallout of their friendship, but I wish there had been more flashback scenes of them being absolute best friends. We mostly saw them in the fallout of their relationship, so it was hard to really feel sad about their long friendship come to an end. I found it easier to feel for them because this very closely mirrored my own experience with my best friend in high school, but if someone doesn't have this kind of experience, I can see them having difficulty feeling attached to Kat and James' friendship.
I did, however, really like the family dynamics in this book. Kat and James both have difficult home lives (Kat's mother passed away a couple years ago and her father is starting to date again, and James' parents are getting a divorce), but their parents-primarily their fathers-are very present and active in their lives. I really enjoyed seeing both girls having such present fathers, that's a relationship that we don't get to see a lot of in YA.

WE USED TO BE FRIENDS is also told in an unusual structure: Kat's storyline is their senior year told chronologically, but James' storyline is told backward. We start with her about to move in to college, and end the book in August of their senior year. I think this is a very intriguing concept, and it was interesting to see the same events told from both girls' POV in different points in the book. However, I had a hard time following along because of this at times. I didn't think that Kat and James had distinct enough voices so I had trouble remembering whose POV I was in.
However, I did like that the opening chapter of the book basically introduced us to James at the end of their relationship, so we got to see their decline while knowing where they were going to end up; kind of like fitting all of the puzzle pieces together as we went.
I also had a really hard time following along with all of the text conversations. I'm assuming this was a formatting issue with my eARC, but whenever the characters texted each other, it was basically one big paragraph of text with no indication of whose text we were reading. This made it incredibly confusing to follow along with, but I'm assuming that's not how the finished version will be.

Finally, I really liked the inclusion of Quinn and Kat's relationship, and Kat's processing of her bisexuality. I did wish that we had seen their relationship develop a little more (I felt like we went from their first kiss to them just being a full-blown couple), but I liked Kat's processing of her bisexuality a lot. She is very confident in her identity, which isn't true for a lot of people figuring it all out (including myself), but it was nice to see that representation. Quinn and Kat's relationship was so adorable and supportive and communicative-I loved it!

Overall, I really liked WE USED TO BE FRIENDS. It's a book that I very much wish I had had when I was a senior in high school, because this is very similar to my own experience with my ex-best friend. I think this is going to be an important book for a lot of teens, and I'm so glad it exists.

The cutest YA about friendship and change, and how heartbreak can also be between best friends. So easy to read (I finished it in a night!) and a great book to read before heading for college

Sadly I had to DNF this as it just wasn't for me. I think I was just a little too old for it and couldn't get into it. I will mark it as 3 stars as it isn't really a criticism of the book but more that I am not it's target audience.

Before starting high school, BFFs James and Kat buried a time capsule in tribute to their friendship. When it comes time to dig it up after senior year the two are barely speaking. What made the “Forever” in BFF end for these two former BFFs? The end of their friendship is told in alternating chapters: James’s start after the end of senior year, Kat’s at the beginning. The shifting timelines may confuse some readers. Yet as one reads on the events alluded to in James’s chapters become clearer when reading about it as it happens from Kat’s perspective. What immediately becomes clear is that James and Kat are two different people and the end of their friendship is inevitable. There wasn’t one dramatic moment that ended their friendship, it was more like the two had grown apart. And yes, the end of their friendship is as heartbreaking if not more so. In balancing the two viewpoints, readers may prefer one over the other, yet it wasn’t any one thing that ended the girl’s friendship. Other books that focus on changing friendships include Little Do We Know by Tamara Ireland Stone and Rayne & Delilah’s Midnite Matinee by Jeff Zentner.

Thank you NetGalley for providing an ARC for this book.

Best friends since kindergarten, James and Kat grow apart in their senior year. Kat is entering a new relationship, while James just ended one. Their friendship becomes strained. The novel is told from both Kat and James’s perspectives, but while Kat chapters happen linearly, James’s chapter are told going backward in time. Both girls grow and change.

I liked the opening chapter of the book, it’s introspective and bittersweet. I like James’s boyfriend, Logan. They have a sweet relationship, even after the breakup. Kat’s girlfriend, Quinn is an interesting character. I enjoyed the conflicts both James and Kat had with their parents.

The ending of the novel is understated, but poignant. The format of the book is innovative.

I didn’t like the writing style, it’s simplistic. There’s hardly any description and a lot of telling.

The novel lacks emotional depth. For example, the reader doesn’t witness Kat and Quinn falling for each other. Kat and Quinn meet, a month passes between chapters, and in Quinn’s second scene they get together. If the interactions happening between these scenes were shown, the characters becoming a couple would have more impact.

Other relationships also suffer. Kat and James have been friends since kindergarten, but there’s little information or references to their relationship prior to senior year. I was still invested in their conflicts, but elaborating on their history would’ve added more weight to the story.

While I find Logan and Quinn interesting, their characters aren’t fully rendered. Quinn says she has struggles but they aren’t explored

Additionally, there’s too many flat characters, such as Kat’s and James’s other friends, who don’t have any characterization to distinguish them from each other. You could remove several characters and not change the story.
We Used To Be Friends is an enjoyable read, but the emotional weight of the story is shallow.

Normally I don’t love YA contemporary, not because there is anything wrong with it, but because I’m not a young adult. I am an old adult, and so some of these books seem a little on the immature side for me. And while this one had its immature parts, I think the overall story of this book is good for people of any age.

This book is essentially about how friendships change. This has happened to me a couple of times where I just didn’t feel connected to friends anymore, so I relate well to what was going on between James and Kat. The book is told in two timelines, James’s point of view starts out after senior year and Kat’s starts at the beginning. I think this is an interesting way to tell this story, because for some reason it made me see that both girls were the issue.

I definitely identified more with James of the two, but I could see myself in Kat a little as well. As I mentioned there really was no bad guy in this story, and I liked that, because that is how life works. Usually no one does something horrible, rather people find that they don’t have as much in common with the person as they did years ago.

This book was great and I would recommend it especially to teenage girls. I also loved that it showed the importance of friendship and how losing a best friend can be the biggest heartbreak of all.