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On Friday, I definitely said I was going to be doing a Poetry Place post  today, but I was incorrect— that’s what I get for not sleeping. Still got two more weeks until Poetry Place, sorry about that. Today is for Bookworms and Bookworms only.

So do you remember that book I hinted at, during the beginning of the month?

Well today is the day, I get to tell you all about it.

This book held a whole lot of promise from the moment I picked it up. I read one of her works maybe six years ago now, and I remembered loving her style but never picking up another one of her books. Until now.

So without further ado…

Firefly Lane— Kristin Hannah

Photo by Guilherme Stecanella on Unsplash

Even though I don’t know the characters or the lives they’re living, this book made me feel nostalgic for people I’ve never met. That’s how you know the writer did a good job.

The way Hannah wrote her book, she follows best friends Tully and Kate, aka TullyandKate, around beginning with their lives in eighth grade up until their late middle-ages. Chronicling a friendship like theirs is hard to do because they come from two very different backgrounds— one is rebellious and independent with a drug-addicted mother who constantly abandons her. The other is quiet and seeks companionship, with the classic kind of family that supports its members unconditionally

Put these two kinds of girls together and let them become best friends— that’s where the story begins.

Photo by Erik Witsoe on Unsplash

As they get older, working their way through loss and love and career hopes and fear, they change together over time. This story is as much about friendship as it is about love; the two go hand in hand. While the two friends fight, raise kids, and manage to hurt one another a few too many times, Firefly Lane is a look into what it’s like to have a best friend you always come back to

Even if at some point, the coming back gets a little too hard.

You’ll see what I mean if you read the book, through Tully and Kate I understood what it’s like to love and hate someone at the same time. Through their families, we understand what more life has to offer beyond our own selves or our jobs or out self-love.

There are some things you cannot find and holes you cannot fill on your own. Sometimes you need help.

Wonderfully written and hard to put down, this book made me want to read what happened at the end even while I was four hundred pages away from it. 

I enjoyed it, for the most part, but I did find one flaw in the book (and also one typo, as a writer I love finding those.) As I read, more towards the end of the book, one question kept popping into my head that shouldn’t have: when is this going to end?

I will say, the book was hard to put down– I meant it when I said that. But it also kept bouncing from one thing to another and I just kept asking myself when we would get to the big twist at the end. It came eventually, trust me it did, but I think it was a little long winded to get to. So I wanted to point that out.

Photo by taylor hernandez on Unsplash

The one thing that surprised me about this book, a little long winded or not, is that is made me miss people… It made me miss everyone. In the way that you think of someone and you can hear their laugh in your ears or you hear a phrase and automatically connect it to them saying it. Or even just the kind of hugs you get from only a few people, the company that’s so easy to be around in silences that don’t have to be awkward.

This book is a chronicle of the human condition through TullyandKate. And it was wonderful.

I hope you think so too.