Frenemies

Megan Crane
5 Spot (2007)
ISBN 9780446698559
Reviewed by April Sullivan for Reader Views (6/07)


“Frenemies,” as the title suggests, is about the fine line between friends and enemies.  Approaching thirty, Gus thinks she has it all: the boyfriend, the good job, a cozy apartment, and her best friends.  But when she catches her friend Helen kissing her boyfriend Nate, she is catapulted from her path to maturity and back into the drama of her college days.  Name calling, drunken episodes, revenge, and stalking are a few of the childish activities that the characters revert to.  Gus has a few short months of parties and holiday reveling with her friends and enemies to pull herself together before her thirtieth birthday on January second.

Megan Crane is a young, witty writer.  She writes about young women making their way from college life into the real world.  The sarcastic, biting humor of Gus and her friends was written in a familiar style and fun to read.  I felt like one of the group, ready to get my jabs in as the characters fought and laughed together.

This book is perfect for twenty or thirty-something readers.  You are sure to find some of your own personality traits (good and bad) in Crane’s characters.  She does not candy coat it.  She brings each character out into the open, exposing their friendly sides as well as their mean sides.  Older readers may not get some of the references to contemporary movies, TV shows, and pop culture that only the “in the know” young reader will understand.

I really enjoyed “Frenemies.”  Gus was smart and funny.  She was sometimes too sarcastic for her own good.  She learned things about herself as events unfolded in this book.  While labeling people “friend” or “enemy,” she was missing the big picture.  She needed to step back from her own personality to see that she may have had it all wrong to begin with.  From this, she learned the maturity she was looking for all along.

I plan to read Megan Crane’s two previous books and I look forward to growing up and old with the characters in her future books, which I am sure there will be many.  She is a fresh young talent that will not go unnoticed.

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