Wish I hadn't bothered finishing this one. Super random events in a friend's group, with awkward forced political commentary. The real kicker was when they bashed country music with when a fake Jason Aldean crashed a wedding... Lots of "wait what?!?" Moments but not in a good way ( )

This is a novel about really flawed people. We meet four young ladies who become roommates as college freshmen. The reader initially becomes optimistic about their futures together. The first years is going to be as good as it gets. They have lots of baggage that over the years they never overcome even after boyfriends and babies. I don't see why these women became friends let alone stay friends. They should have just gone their separate ways. I really don't like any of them as people. ( )

I read 50 pages and couldn't continue with this boring story. Elizabeth Ames writes in a passive style that left me unable to connect with the characters. She also perpetuates ignorant, damaging notions. To learn specifics, I recommend reading reviews on Goodreads that contain spoilers. (As of now, there's only one other review of this book on LibraryThing.) I knew if I continued reading I'd become increasingly enraged.

Note: I received this as an Advance Reader Copy from Goodreads in September 2019. ( )

Four young women meet in their freshman year at elite liberal arts college Quincy-Hawthorn; they remain roommates and best friends throughout their four years there and into their first decade-plus of adult life. Structured in four parts, with a prologue, each part is the story of one (un?)forgivable thing each of the women has done - The Accident (Alice), The Accusation (Ji Sun), The Kiss (Margaret), The Bite (Lainey) - and how they stay closest friends throughout, their fealty to each other deeper than to anyone else. Between the four of them, they face a tragic accident in the past, childhood sexual abuse, a predatory professor, a potential rapist, infidelity, involvement in the Occupy Wall Street movement, infertility, and an surplus of maternal love.

See also: Commencement by J. Courtney Sullivan

Part I: The Accident, Freshman year, 2002-2003
Part II: The Accusation, Sophomore year, 2003-2004
Part III: The Kiss, Postgraduates, 2007-2012
Part IV: The Bite, New parents, 2014-2015

You could go years into a friendship before learning how someone got her scars. Why push it? (16)

...and she thought now of how that fire was not cooled, but at this table it felt more like fuel than destruction. (Lainey, 86)

She couldn't hold in her head that he could have given her so much but taken so much from others, and it made her feel like she had to throw away everything he ever touched, even the parts of herself he'd helped forge. (Lainey, re: Walker, 130)

Falling in love was maybe a little like deciding to smile when you were in a foul mood; you tried it and then your face gave in and then your heart considered there might be something to it. Your mind stayed out of it for a while. (Ji Sun at Margaret's wedding, 163)

"It isn't ours to intervene" ...Alice had understood it in a way that would become useful to her later, how decorum and abdication were wed... (206)

Why were who you wanted to be and how you acted so hard to reconcile, even in such meager ways? (Lainey, 251)

Did loving so much mean you knew more about hatred? Did destruction have to follow so close on the heels of creation...? (Margaret re: Lainey, 276)

Sometimes, when something broke, you rushed to clean it up, piece it back together with care. Other times, you threw your hands up, smashed everything else in the room. (Ji Sun, 297)

"People have trauma," said Alice, "when they don't know the story of their own lives." (324) ( )