Book Review: "Keep Your Friends Close" by Lucinda Berry

You can read some of my reviews of Lucinda Berry novels here...

One thing I will say about Lucinda Berry's books is that they often deal with dark and distressing subjects. As I have reviewed some and read so many more so far, I can honestly say that they are all very disturbing in their themes and the way in which the characters interact with each other. Of course, though the book Phantom Limb was not my favourite, it is still pretty good. Keep Your Friends Close is no exception to the rule. Beginning with a woman being found faced down in a pool at her own West Hollywood party, it's clear she's dead.. But what happened to this woman who was a great swimmer and why are some of her friends distraught and others...well, not so much?

As we are thrust back in time, we have three narratives of similar situations. One is Jade, a main character with quite a bleak outlook if you ask me. Then we've got Whitney who was the drowned woman's best friend - when we meet her in the past, we see how close they really were. Finally, there's Brooke, a woman who is ousted by her own wife after her wife falls for another woman leaving Brooke alone with her thoughts and a newborn son she carried to term herself. Honestly, I feel sorry for Brooke even though I do agree that she is acting a bit out of it and needs to try at least, to pick herself up. Be that as it may, we don't know yet who or what is responsible for the death of the woman who drowned in the pool. Lucinda Berry will make us believe it is everyone, then nobody, then twist us around the possibilities...and there are many.

There's a ton going on here. First of all we have a woman who has drowned with a strange secret because well, she's dead and everyone is a suspect even though they are all friends. Then we have the people who others point the fingers at, some who acted strangely like when Brooke jumped into the pool to try and save her, pounding on her chest until her ribs snapped - trying to save her. These West Hollywood mothers may have secrets, but some have secret lives they are not telling anyone about - especially the dead woman. I loved this book because there are a ton of people who lie by omission - they just conveniently leave things out because they don't want to tell the reader either. For example: Brooke leaves out the person she was before her wife for a long while until she name-drops some stuff that raises eyebrows. There's also the fact that not many of these people actually like each other.

Once we are done with the politics of the group we start to find out that this whole book is to do with not the mothers but the children. The dead woman is just the beginning but there are babies involved and the competition for a cookie-cutter perfect life with perfect husbands and perfect kids. The problem is one husband is unemployed, one has a gambling problem, one is a drunk and some still act like frat boys though they're pushing 40. Add this tot he gossip queendom of the snappy desperate housewives of the main characters and you have yourself a Keeping Up Appearances episode and much more. Lucinda Berry definitely has her way of keeping her reader absolutely hooked on every turn of the cards but this one absolutely took the cake. I genuinely could not even sleep whilst reading this. I had to know every juicy detail, every catty insult, every side-eye and every single stumble of a bumbling mess of a husband these women had.

By the time we get to the end of the book and we've figured out exactly what has happened we not only feel absolutely terrible but we feel like this was the result of the mothering club these women were so dedicated to showing off to each other about. Even when speaking with the police officers, these women could not exactly describe what the mothering club did because all they did was compete with each other like some sort of Instagram influencer house. Honestly, it was brilliant.