I wasn't quite sure how to rate this, but since ultimately this is meant to represent my subjective level of enjoyment more than the objective quality of the book, its lamentably low.
More to the point, it's difficult to discern the purpose of this book. The writing is quite good; the plotting though ...
The entire book is about a person making a podcast about his dead high school friend. Books about podcasts are all the rage, so it checks that box. But as a plot, its woefully thin for nearly 300 pages that conclude with a trite revelation along the lines of how we never really know anyone.
Which is a bit frustration, considering that this was obviously meant to be a character study.

I don't know how much the writer Jeremy Gordon has based a writer named Jacob Goldberg on himself, or whether this is the case of write what you know. But what he and/or his protagonist know here boils down to a sort of tepid navelgazing quite on brand for people just entering their thirties and looking to "interrogate" their life and experiences, so much so that at some point the protagonist actually tells himself to stop using the word interrogate.

This is much along the same lines of young people penning memoirs these days, despite the fact that there just aren't enough tree rings on them to be all that interesting.
Nor is it that interesting to read about someone's high school experience.

The writing is good enough to keep the pages turning, but there's no reward for your time. Just more talking about the same thing or nothing at all, all muted revelations, and uninteresting characters that leave you wildly indifferent.
Even the cover is peculiarly cheap looking and underwhelming for a Top Five press.

Didn't work for me. User mileage may vary. Thanks Netgalley.

This is a great book! It had a bunch of funny moments, parts that made you think, and parts that were relatable. I did like the themes of friendship, digital age issues, and technology, as well as the obsession our character goes through. I liked the writing style and how the characters were written!

Thank you to NetGalley, to the author, and to the publisher for this complementary ARC in exchange for my honest review!!!

Great cover and grateful to read an advance copy from NetGalley. Jacob is a journalist on leave from his job and decides he wants to create a podcast revisiting his high school years, particularly since an unusual number of his classmates died. He focuses on the death of one of his best friends, Seth, and learns things that surprise him and cause him to process his grief in a fresh way.

Jacob is a narrator that I cared about and I liked his distinct voice. I found some of the encounters he has with his former classmates to be repetitive and therefore there was a bit of a slow middle. When I got to "Part 2" in the book, the story picked up and I was engaged until the end.

Side note - the meaning of the title was fun to uncover and I'm going to look on Facebook (hint) to see if this feature still exists.

(3.5/5, rounded up)

Immediately after finishing I knew this would be one I'd want to sit with before reviewing fully...

But in the meantime, some misc thoughts

- definitely a specific audience, and outside of that idk if you'd enjoy
- if you/your school didn't experience a student's tragic death, this won't be as poignant. truthfully you likely won't get out this everything that you could from this, had you lost someone in HS. what weird concept, having a "leg up" so to speak, because you have an understanding that will actually help you identify <i>more</i> w this novel.
- the middle really lost me, a major lull that i'm not sure I would have worked past had this not been for NG - which is unfortunate because in the end I did get a lot from this. I started typing out that I hope others don't do that... But if this isn't for you, it just isn't for you. You'll know if this is something relatable or not fairly quickly.

Again, I'm definitely coming back to organize and add to this, but for now...

{Thank you bunches to NetGalley, Jeremy Gordon and Harper Perennial for the DRC in exchange for my honest review!}

ight now this is a 3.5 but I have a feeling I’ll be thinking about it for a while and maybe that makes it a 4?

The story, overall, felt a bis disjointed to me- The back and forth between present day, some time earlier, some time a bit earlier than that and the past all told through the the storytelling device of Jacob’s job stressors felt a bit belabored.

Even still, the writing was beautiful, made me a bit introspective, and positioned grief as a lens in which we see ourselves; how the absence of someone might blur the lines of who we were and who we are.

There was also a lot that was relatable as a millennial that also felt smart and it was interesting to see it crystallized on a page and to think like, “yeah, I’ve that thought before too.”

TY NetGalley for the ARC - looking forward to talking about this one with friends once it’s out.

The book puts a stake in an intelligent position that seems well suited for the millennial generation—that social media has only served to detach us from true friendships, substituting the commodity of surface connection for the vulnerability of actual intimacy. Additionally, it maps out relationships in a literal timeline, allowing us to retrace them, but also leaving so little separation from our pasts that it challenges emotional growth.

Gordon has given us a narrator that we can trust to probe this subject with sensitivity even as his actions may belie ethics. Jacob is rehashing his relationship with Seth for career reasons, but also to resolve some sense of dissatisfaction with how his friend’s life ended. He lays out enough of this for us with a believable earnestness that makes the story ring true.

A large problem with the book is that its concept automatically installs a narrative distance: we hear so much about Seth through these mildly disinterested characters, former classmates who are pressed (through interviews) to remember him. It ends up being a very talky story with little action that would at least alter the pace. And not having the story in front of us, so to speak, creates a lack of immediacy that removes us from any investment in the resolution.

This book is a profound examination of how grief shapes memory and vice versa; it's also about friendship and personal fulfillment and connection in a post-internet world, but it's memory that shapes both the crux of the story and the reader's experience of it. At alternating moments throughout the story, you will pity Jacob, you will roll your eyes at him, and you will also see yourself in him; you will be mad about it and also grateful that someone else understands these things that feel inarticulable most of the time. See Friendship is a singular novel that, to lean entirely on cliche, will stay with you for a very long time after it's over.