Friday Night With The Girls

by Shari Low

[Leah]

Shari Low isn’t an author I’ve experienced before. I know Chloe enjoys her novels. However I received a proof copy of her newest book Friday Night With The Girls and because I was already waiting on another book (that didn’t show!), I hadn’t already started something and Friday Night With The Girls looked great – and fairly short, which is great since I love to finish books the same day I start them (yes, I’m strange) – so I decided to give it a read and break my Shari Low duck. I’m rather pleased I did because Friday Night With The Girls was a brilliant read, one I thoroughly enjoyed.

Friday Night With The Girls, as you might expect from the title, tells the story of the friendship between Lou, Lizzy and Ginger and how they meet most Friday nights for drinks and chat. So much Chick Lit focuses on the romance between the main female and male characters and friendships do seem to be pushed to the side. Which is, of course, a surprise since female friendships are meant to be huge and not worth losing when a man comes along. So Friday Night With The Girls was a very, very welcome change. I don’t remember the last novel I read where friendship was the main element of the book. The novel starts in present day Glasgow as the three girls meet for a weekend spa break and then goes back into the past – the 80s, 90s culminating in the return to the present and how all three girls got there with their friendship in tact.

It did take me a few pages to get my bearings with the novel and with the constant backwards and forward of the book, but it was easy enough to follow, and I loved revisiting the times in the girl’s lives that defined their relationship. There are many ups and downs that Lou, Ginger and Lizzy go through – marriages, divorces, injuries, finding true love, having kids – I don’t think there was anything Low left out. If it’s possible to happen, it happened, and the good thing was it wasn’t in any way over the top. Some Chick Lit novels barely encompass a few weeks so it was refreshing to learn everything there was possibly to learn about the girls, and it definitely helped to provide a more rounder picture of them all.

I absolutely loved all three girls. Lou is the narrator of the novel, but we very easily get to know Lizzy and Ginger just as good (and they do have their own chapter or two where they narrate, too). I thought Lou was a wonderful character and I wanted nothing more than to join all three girls at the spa they were visiting and reminisce right along with them. All three girls are entirely different, Lou is the hopeless romantic with the sensible head when it comes to everything else, Lizzy is the clumsy one and Ginger is the loud-mouth who likes a drink. The rubbed off each other well, and if Low knows how to write anything it’s female friendship. I thought Lou’s Aunt Josie was a Godsend, and I loved how she treated Lou far better than Lou’s parents ever did. She was the mother Lou should have had.

There was a surprising twist to the book that I didn’t see coming. I was sitting and wondering what was going to happen, because it seemed as though all the build up was for a reason of some sort but I was surprised at what that reason was. It was handled sensitively though and I was desperate to know the outcome of it. I thought Friday Night With The Girls was brilliantly written and I enjoyed every page. It kept me reading, so much so that I abandoned my plans to watch a third episode of The Mentalist (it takes a LOT for me to give up Patrick Jane) in favour of finishing up this book. It certainly did not disappointed and I’m very pleased I decided to give it a read. I’d definitely recommend Friday Night With The Girls, it’s the ultimate novel if you’re a fan of friendships in Chick Lit and Low does it brilliantly well, she can definitely write a friendship and I’ll be looking out for her next novel. Definitely recommended.