Friends and Other Liars
A Novel
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
Sometimes the secrets we keep are more dangerous than the ones we reveal...
To all my old friends:
So here you all are. Nice to see you can show up for a person once he’s dead.
When Ruby St. James returns to her hometown, it is to the grave of her old friend Danny, a member of a group that was, ten years ago, Ruby’s whole world. The crew made a pact back then: stay together, stay loyal, and stay honest. But that was before all of the lies.
Because even friends keep secrets. They just don’t stay secret for long.
Now Danny has left behind a letter for each of them, issuing one final ultimatum: share your darkest betrayal to the group, or risk it coming out in a trap he has created. When past mistakes resurface, the lines of friendship blurb, and four old friends are left trying to understand what it means to lie to the ones you love best.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A group of five childhood friends are brought back together with explosive results in Coble's riveting, assured debut. At a gathering after the funeral of Danny Deuso, who committed suicide, Danny's mother gives each of his best friends a letter containing a secret unique to each, a betrayal of the pact of honesty that they made to each other. The letters threaten to reveal the secrets in another way if they don't voluntarily share with one another. This is mainly Ruby's story; she relates growing up with the crew, finding intense first love with Murphy, and the surprising secret she's kept from him for a decade. Interspersed are sequences in Danny's troubled voice, and Ally, Ruby's closest friend, tells her story as well, offering a point of view from someone who stayed in tiny Chatwick, Vt., while Ruby left. Coble's story adeptly addresses domestic violence, drug addiction, suicide, and the pain of young love. The revelations in the last half are genuinely surprising and satisfyingly devoid of pat solutions, but the real draw is the ensemble cast, which anchors this memorable novel.
