Alisa’s daughter Ella, and Lauren’s daughter Ana gave us a list of YA titles we hadn’t read yet.   Aileen read We Were Liars by E. Lockheart, a thriller with a blow-your-mind twist at the end. Though classified as YA, we all felt like this book was just as suitable for adults also. Lauren read The Book Thief by Markus Zusak after years of her daughter Ana telling her to. Ana has a special connection to this book and briefly joins us to talk about how books she read and loved when she was in middle school have a particular place in her heart.  Alisa read Conversations With Friends by ..read more

This week we read books that hovered somewhere in the beach read category, yet much more challenging and satisfying than the run-of-the-mill sand and surf fluff. Aileen read The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller, a story of summer, secrets, love, and lies. Lauren read Mr. Wrong Number, a hilarious rom-com by Lynn Painter. Alisa read The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, about an aging and reclusive Hollywood movie icon who is finally ready to tell the truth about her glamorous and scandalous life. And Josie read Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens, a heartbreaking coming-of-age story w ..read more

This week on Fiction Between Friends we have a special guest, New York Times bestselling author, Beth Revis! We talk about her new book The Princess and the Scoundrel, coming out August 16, 2022, and her serial novel Museum of Magic that is out right now on Kindle Vella. Beth tells us all about the lovely people at Star Wars, and about how she worked pulling tarot cards and throwing dice to decide plot points in Museum of Magic.  We also discuss the state of YA, publishing in general, and we even touch on the banned book controversy sweeping the nation.  Alisa was sorely missed ..read more

This week the gang reads historical fiction. Alisa and Aileen are old pros at this sub-genre while Josie and Lauren are more like dabblers. Ironically, almost all of the picks were in the WW2 category while Josie was the odd duck who traveled back to medieval Europe. Aileen read Moloka’i by Alan Brennert. She’s been trying for years to read this book but every time she picked it up, she’d put it back down after asking herself, “do I really want to read about a leper colony?” Well, she finally read it and she’s so glad she did. It was uplifting and inspiring and not at all the bummer she imagi ..read more

Ever wonder how your favorite book becomes a movie or a TV show? Well, wonder no longer because we have brought in a bona-fide filmmaker to explain it. Lauren couldn’t be with us, but we had our first guest speaker, Barbara Stepansky on in her place. Barbara is an award-winning screenwriter and a director who writes for the show Outlander.  She had us read Kate Morton’s The Forgotten Garden as a hypothetical book-to-miniseries project and we had a blast “breaking” the story (that’s Hollywood lingo for a bunch of writers sitting around talking about how to turn a book into a show). We thin ..read more

This week on Fiction Between Friends, anything goes! It was the “What’s on Your Nightstand?” episode.   Aileen read Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld. A modern re-telling of Pride and Prejudice.   Lauren swung for the fences and read a book in Spanish that she’s been trying to read forever. En los Zapatos de Valeria by Elisabet Benavent, about 4 women who are best friends (sounds familiar) who are all on different paths in their lives and in their loves.    Alisa read The Midnight Library by Matt Haig, and Josie read Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik. And she promises to stop stal ..read more

We talked about it, and we’ve decided that the pandemic is over. For now at least. And we wanted to celebrate by talking about what helped get us through it. Each other, of course, but also what we read. Aileen talked about how much she loved reading Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid.  Lauren reminisced about Ross Poldark, the first book in the Poldark series by Winston Graham. And Alisa and Josie went non-fiction with I’m Judging You: The Do Better Manual by Luvvie Ajayi, and The Emperor of Scent by Chandler Burr.  ..read more

This week we all read books that were set in our neck of the woods. New England! Aileen starts us off with On Beauty by Zadie Smith.  Lauren covers The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane by Katherine Howe.  Josie read The Secret History by Donna Tartt.  But Alisa probably “won” this week with her read, We Ride Upon Sticks by Quan Barry.   Trigger warnings: heavy drug and alcohol abuse, suicide ..read more

We felt like we needed to lighten up a bit, so this week we read books that made us laugh. Lauren read an old favorite, One for the Money by Janet Evanovich.  Alisa read Faking It by Jennifer Cruise. Aileen read The Humans by Matt Hague. And Josie read one of her favorites, Wyrd Sisters by Terry Pratchett.  ..read more

Aileen had always wanted an excuse to read Nora Ephron, so she read Heartburn by Nora Ephron. Lauren got her sweet tooth fix with an old copy of Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel.  Alisa read A River Runs Through It by Norman McClain, and Josie dug up her copy of Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte ..read more