Friends And Liars by Kaela Coble

          Starting with the death of Danny, a group of schoolfriends get back together at his funeral and remake the connections they forged during the trying years of Middle and High School.  At least, that is what I think we are supposed to think.  While it is an intriguing premise to take a look at friendship 10 years down the line it doesn't really come off.

I found the characters themselves to be very cookie cutter and basically unlikeable.  To a man (and woman) they seem to blame circumstance for anything that goes awry, nothing is ever their fault but rather the circumstance they were in formed their actions.  The bulk of the book is told from Rosie's perspective and I found her to be completely unsympathetic and very self-centred.  This wasn't helped by the fact that everyone is a caricature of a real person and embodies only one trait - I suppose it is an attempt to be a literary Breakfast Club for the Millennial generation but it falls so far short of the mark it is almost laughable.

The whole concept of having secrets that you keep from your closest friends is a good one; even if those secrets turn out to be rather unrealistic in terms of a small town life.  Indeed there is only really Ally's infidelity whilst on "a break" from Emmet (watch Friends much author) and Rosie's that ring as being possibly true.  The bulk of the book is flashback to when they were The Crew and full of concerns only children and teenagers have but because the characters are so one dimensional you find you don't really care about any of it.

I'm not entirely sure which genre this book falls in but I find that I care even less.  It passed the time on some suddenly cold Spring days and it didn't anger me but that is the best I can say about it.