this fictionalized version of the defining decade (a must read for anyone in their twenties) follows four friends from college & the many small choices they make that irrevocably alter the path of their lives. albeit a bit bogged down in flashbacks (something that can detrimentally slow down the pacing of a novel), the raw portrayal of friendships, love, loss & career was so cathartic. even though there were a lot of different POV’s, i still found myself resonating with each one.

Four college friends ( Rachel-Clarissa-Dev-& Nate)
This is a coming of age story and making peace with the choices ( or coin flips of life)

You will not only grow to love each character but you will also get their perspective along the journey of this 15 year span of their friendship and lives and what choices they made and how those choices impacted them individually and as a group.

This is my first time reading Lauryn Chamberlain but it definitely won’t be my last.

4 happy life goes on stars!

This was a beautiful story of friendship and how you grow in and out of them. We first see the four characters on the cusp of adulthood, about to graduate college. You’ll find yourself relating to the characters and their many ups and downs over two decades.

This book is about the lives of four best friends in the years after they graduate from college. It is narrrated in alternating chapters by each of the friends. Through the years, they experience different personal challenges, and find that what the want at 30s is not necessarily what they wanted or expected when they were 20. It feels true to the way relationships change.

Ultimately, Who We Are Now by Lauryn Chamberlain is about growing up. Four people meet their freshman year and quickly become a tight circle of friendship. Post-grad, they all start to live their lives and slowly grow apart and then back together.

There's something about those friends you make when you are 18, 19, 20. Those early years of freedom, maybe it's the first time you've ever been away from your hometown or away from your parents and siblings. I remember those friends, I still talk to those friends. There's a deep connection that sometimes other friendships will pale in comparison. That's what is happening here: Clarissa, Rachel, Nate and Dev are connected and created their own type of family.

While I did find Nate and Clarissa to be the most unrelatable, I still really enjoyed this book. It brought back my own memories of sitting on the library lawn, skipping class and late night parties on a roof.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read and review this book .

Not for me; I cannot relate to anything in this story and have decided to just plain stop.

A group of friends about to graduate from college celebrates by doing lots of shots and reminiscing on the eve of their graduation. They wonder where they will be in 4 years.

Jump to the future where they find themselves in NY living the dream, or are they? Ok, I get the plot so far, but I do not find the characters to be likeable or believable. I really don't care what they do since the story is taking so long to get anywhere. There are far too many good stories out there to waste any more of my time.

Thank you NetGalley for an advance reader copy in exchange for an honest opinion.

A relatable, honest, and engaging exploration of friendships. Four college friends continue to intersect through the years in both expected and unexpected ways. Chamberlain expertly captures the essence of adulthood in all its complicated glory. This book will stay with you long after you've finished it.

Hello! I absolutely adored this book. The review that I pasted below will appear on episode 16 of my podcast which will drop on Monday, July 10, 2023. The link to the episode that I added below won't be active until then. The review will also appear in text format on my website and I'll add it to Goodreads at that time as well. I'll also promote the book on Instagram leading up to release day. Thanks for the opportunity to read this before release!

-----Review-----

Every once in a while, a book comes along that really hits me in the heart, and makes me stand up and pay attention. So far this year I’ve had it happen four times: Hello, Beautiful by Ann Napolitano, Adelaide by Genevieve Wheeler, The Collected Regrets of Clover by Mikki Brannen and now this one.

While Hello, Beautiful made me think about mental health and how I approach my own, Adelaide made me reflect on how I’ve let myself be used and the missteps I took in past relationships. The Collected Regrets of Clover had me reflecting on the little things in life that I really should cherish more, and then Who We Are Now came along and made me want to hug the friends I still hold dear, and reconnect with those I’ve lost touch with.

Growing up gay in conservative, rural Idaho, I didn’t have any close friends in high school. There were people I hung out with on occasion, but I never had those super close, meaningful friendships like I saw on TV or the John Hughes movies I was obsessed with. It wasn’t until I got to Oregon State University that I really found my people. I showed up alone, horribly shy, and scared, but also excited at the possibilities. Three years later, I left feeling confident, loved and most importantly that not only did I matter, but there were people in this world who would accept me exactly the way I am. The friendships and the memories I made while there are still some of my most cherished. These people were my family, and that’s exactly how our main characters - Rachel, Dev, Nate, and Clarissa - felt about one another.

The book begins right as the four best friends and roommates are about to graduate college and start their lives in the real world. At the top of the book, Rachel and Nate are headed to New York City. Rachel has dreams of working in publishing and eventually being a published author while Nate chases the big bucks - he has a job at Lehman’s working in finance. Clarissa is staying in the Chicago area as she pursues a career in standup comedy. She hopes to land a job at Second City and eventually get a gig on SNL. Dev isn’t sure what his future holds, and a last-minute decision has him moving to New York as well. All of this plays out in the first chapter of the book, and then after that, each chapter is told from the perspective of one of the four friends, and each chapter spans a year in their life. They grow, they hit walls, they achieve successes and endure blows to their egos. They meet new friends and new loves and, despite their best efforts, they begin to drift apart as life takes them in different directions and ultimately leads one of them into unexpected tragedy.

I will admit that it took me a while to settle into this one. It wasn’t until about two-thirds of the way into the book that I felt like I really settled in and had a good handle on the four characters and where they were headed. Once I hit that point, though, I was fully invested and felt as though I was a part of this friend group. I felt their excitement for their successes, and their frustrations with one another when one of them acted like an ass. I especially felt their loss when tragedy struck. Like the friend group, I felt a part of me had been ripped away. I desperately wanted to pick up the pieces and glue them back together, but that just wasn’t possible.

When I’d finished the book, I lay on my sofa reflecting on the friendships I had in college - one in particular. There was this one woman I was super close with. We were inseparable our last year of school, and then I moved to Texas and she left for grad school and eventually got married and we drifted apart. We reconnected a few years later, but differing political affiliations in a volatile political climate put a wedge between us. Even after I moved back to Oregon, we never saw one another. We always meant to reconnect - or so we said - but I think we both knew it would be incredibly awkward, so we never put in a lot of effort into making it happen. And then one day I found out she had died and it devastated me. I couldn’t help but feel deep regret that I hadn’t tried a little harder to reconnect. I think I always thought in the back of my mind that someday we would. Someday it would happen, but now someday isn’t possible.

I also found myself reflecting on all the wonderful times I had in college with the various groups of crazy, loving, hilarious and loyal individuals that I was lucky enough to call my friends. I was involved in various extra-curricular activities, so I had several friend groups. It made me want to contact some that I haven’t seen in years, but then it made me wonder how different it might be now. I wonder if their memories are as good as mine.

Despite being a part of several friend groups, I had a smaller core group I am still super close with. The final scene in the book definitely took me back to my final year at college and the little house I spent so much time in with some of my closest friends. Just like the friends in the book had so many memories wrapped up in the walls of 1208 Maple, there’s a house on the corner of a street in Corvallis, OR that holds a ton of memories for me. I think maybe it’s time to go revisit the campus again. It’s been too long.

As you can tell, this book cracked something open in me. While slow to start, it eventually had me fully invested in the characters and the direction their lives took. I think I would have liked a little more of their time together in college - we get that they are close when the book begins, we just don’t really get why and then suddenly they all go their separate ways. I think for me, had I gotten a bit more of their final few weeks of school and really had a more solid understanding of what made the group tick, I would have been more emotionally invested in their friendship from the start.

That said, I ended up really loving the book, and it’s one I will snag a physical copy of to add to my shelves. I, personally, rated it 4.5 stars only because the first 2/3 of the book was a little slow for me, but I rounded up and gave it 5/5 on Goodreads.

My thanks to NetGalley and Penguin for the opportunity read Lauryn Chamberlain's Who We Are Now. I was impressed with how each character was so well defined, and how the writer was able to bring the reader into each character's differing perceptions of events they shared. I'll look for more by Ms. Chamberlain

I enjoyed this book so much that I immediately looked up other books by this author to read!

Who We Are Now starts the last day of college for four roommates, then follows their lives, friendships, relationships, and careers over the next 15 years. I loved how the narration shifted between the four friends as each year was from a different friend's perspective. I struggled to put down the book since each character felt so real to me.

I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys books about friendship and the time in your early adult years when you're trying to find yourself/your path/your people/your career.

I don't have very many good things to say about this book, but I don't want to be unkind, so I'll keep it brief.

I'm sure if Chamberlain had made all four of her characters white, people may have said the novel was just another story about Caucasian twentysomethings in New York City. But it's curious to me that she decided to make one of her characters Indian then have him write a book about being a brown person in New York in the aftermath of 9/11. There are certainly others better-equipped to tell that story.

As an author of two novels, she should know how difficult it is to publish a book, but she has that same character write a book in seemingly one year-long burst, get it published, have it optioned, and get nominated for a Golden Globe for writing the screenplay. Even though he never wanted to be a writer.

Another character is a comic who never says a single funny thing throughout the course of the book.

When I got to the end and discovered the identity of the death hinted at in the opening pages, I didn't feel much of anything because none of it was really all that believable to start with.

I thought this book was going to be something different than it was. The writing is very good, but it's just not the type of story I'm interested in right now. It's a DNF for me...not because there's anything lacking in the book, but it's just not what I'm looking for at the moment.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC. I found this book to be an interesting read, but I wasn’t a huge fan of some of the characters. Chamberlain is a good storyteller though, so it kind of evened out.

Who We Are Now...

That what once was is not permanent. Who We Are Now, Chamberlain's second novel, hits deep for those of us who were left missing our "Friends from Home" after her debut title. I found myself engrossed within the pages of this narrative that is ostensibly about the trials and monotony of growing up.

Some moments have you on the edge of your seat.
Other have you nodding in mundane agreement as if you're out for monthly brunch with your own friends.
The lives of Rachel, Dev, Nate, and Clarissa will have you hooked to the final page.

Chamberlain's writing has evolved to a pacing that keeps you yearning to find what's waiting around the corner. You may recognize yourself in the four main characters. Some pieces you will be proud to recognize, and others you may wish to hide back in your memory box under your bed. They are relatable, annoying, and likeable each in their own way.

When one person you love experiences the success you wish you had, how do you cope? When you hit the pinnacle you have been striving for, does it feel as good as you expected?
How do we handle the ebbs and flows of time mixed with joy, fear, disappointment, grief and love and keep ourselves together?

Who We Are Now filled my heart to the brim with emotion. Not as a heavy-topic read, but for the mere fact that I related to each main character. A piece of Dev, Clarissa, Nate, and Rachel each lives inside of me. This caused a lot of reflection about who I was, Who I am Now, and ultimately, Who I want to be.


Thank you so much for this pre-read Net Galley!