Published: January 23rd, 2018 by MIRA

Genre: Psychological Thriller

My Rating: 3.5/5 Stars

Okay, let me start off by being completely honest. Psychological thriller just isn’t my genre. I’ve tried. So many times. I want to like this genre. I swear I do. But I just… can’t. Maybe I just haven’t found the right book… (I really disliked Gone Girl and was left pretty disappointed by Final Girls.…) Maybe I’ll find one out there and it’ll just click and I’ll finally understand why everyone and their brother seems to love this type of book. Or maybe not. But I just wanted to preface this review by saying that I haven’t had the best of luck with this type of book.

With that in mind, I’m not 100% sure why I agreed to participate in the TLC Book Tour for Best Friends Forever… maybe because I keep trying? I keep wanting to like this genre? I don’t know. In any case, I agreed to read it. And I’m actually really glad that I did!

Best Friends Forever (not the most original title in the world…) is about two friends, Alice and Kat. It is told from the perspective of Alice, who met Kat in the airport three years ago. The book starts just after Kat’s unlikable husband is found dead, and it alternates between the present day story line and the story of Alice and Kat’s growing friendship.

I really enjoyed this book. I thought the characters were fascinating, it was very well written, and I was sucked into the story from the beginning. I flew through it in just a couple of days and I found myself not wanting to put it down. I was especially a fan of the alternating time lines… the way we were shown the present day events, and the events of the past side by side. I thought that was a super clever way of revealing things a little bit at a time and keeping me hooked on the story. I mean it when I say I genuinely liked this book.

…that is, until the ending. And I think this might be a lot more on me than it is on this book, because I know the ending really made this book for a lot of people. But I just can’t buy into this style! I don’t want to give away any major spoilers… so I’m going to be careful how I say this. As with every book in this genre, there’s a twist ending. And with so many books like this, knowing the M.O. of the genre, I’m anticipating it for the entire book. A twist, an unreliable narrator, none of those things surprise me at all. The ending felt flat. And like I said, that might be more on me than on the book itself.

But still, I’m just not convinced that this book supported the ending. Sure, I saw it coming in more ways than one. But I’m not sure I believe it in the way I’m supposed to. I think it was trying just a little too hard to be that unexpected, jaw-dropping ending. So much so that it wasn’t supported throughout the rest of the novel.

Now maybe this is just my own problem with the genre, and maybe everyone else who picks this book up will have no problem with the ending. I think that’s great if you feel that way! I loved the book up until the end, and so I was disappointed to find that I felt let down once again. But I was also sort of expecting that to happen, since it’s happened to me so many times before with psychological thrillers.

I’m in no way trying to discourage anyone from picking this one up. By all means, grab it and read it if psychological thrillers are your thing! You just might love it. It was a well written book and I am glad that I read it. But it unfortunately hasn’t really changed my mind about psychological thrillers as a genre.

If you have any recommendations for one you think might be able to change my mind, I’d love to know! Like I said, I really feel like I’m missing out on something here and would love to be able to get in on it.

Also, thank you so much to TLC Book tours for the free copy of this book. I’m glad I was able to participate in the tour!