When We Were Friends

Holly Bourne On Sale Date: September 27, 222 Paperback 416 pages 8 in H | 5.3 in W | .8 in T | .6 lb Fiction / Friendship Fiction / Women Fiction / Coming Of Age Fiction / Humorous Three Women meets One Day in this darkly funny story about two friends who reunite after a decade of estrangement, only to remember the forces that pushed them apart in the first place. The world was a very different place in the late-nineties, when Fern and Jessica became best friends. It was a compliment to get groped in a club, normal to have your arse rated out of ten in school, and a song about a man murdering his pregnant wife was Christmas No. 1. Not that the two girls noticed any of that. They were too busy growing up, trying to find themselves, experimenting with love, alcohol and drugs amid their near-obsessive friendship. Until, one day something happened to make Fern cut Jessica out of her life completely. Fifteen years later, the pair are reunited in a very changed world. Fern’s a successful mental health columnist, waiting for her perfect boyfriend to finally propose. Whereas Jessica is a single mum who has done very well out of her divorce. Tentatively, they try to rebuild their friendship while Fern reflects on the events leading up to their initial downfall. Viewing their adolescence in a post MeToo/Women’s March world, Fern grapples with how their friendship was tarred by the male gaze, yet also the sanctuary from it. With Jessica she had ever felt more known, more loved, more hilarious, more...undesirable in comparison. Soon, old and unhealthy patterns start to reemerge. Have things really gotten better--for these two best girl friends, or for women as a whole? Set within two timelines, Girl Friends is an unflinching celebration of female friendship and how much it has to overcome. It’s a caustically funny and brutally honest look at the roles girls are forced to play, and how they can break free in order to truly support and love one another.