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A review by pushingdessy
The Friendship Breakup by Annie Cathryn
3.0
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The protagonist was a fan of self-help books, and it makes sense because this book felt like self-help fiction (not necessarily in a bad way!).
I wasn't familiar with the genre "mom-com" and, as a single woman with no wishes to be a mother, I probably wouldn't have picked this book on my own. But I received it as my first widget, and I couldn't say no. So thanks to NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books for sending me this in exchange for an honest review.
I couldn't say no for a second reason, and it's that the topic is very dear to me. We talk too much about romantic break-ups and not enough about friendship break-ups, and how they can be just as painful and hard to get over. And it's not even clean, loud break-ups, either, but the passive-aggressive ghosting, as well as just failing to be there. Where are the songs about a friendship gone cold?
Fallon finds herself wondering what went wrong when she realizes that not only her best friend has been ghosting and avoiding her for some time, but she's also been leaving her out of group hangs. Willing to forgive and forget, Fallon decides to try to bring the group closer while attempting to get her chocolate business started. But some things just can't be healed by a suburban Mexican fiesta...
Let's start with the good stuff. I deeply related to Fallon as far as the topic of friendship went. Her feelings and thoughts, at points contradictory, were so genuine to what losing someone feels like: missing them and wanting them back, feeling like it's your fault, wanting to go back to the good times, yet slowly realizing that it wasn't actually all good, feeling bitter and thinking about all their flaws, trash-talking about them. It's kind of annoying to read from the outside looking in because you're like "which one is it??", but - I've been there! I get it. And then also feeling like it's really hard to meet new people as you get older, whether to date or to befriend.
I also thought it was a very real portrayal of motherhood, ugly bits included. Fallon loves her daughter, but is still cognizant of how much she struggled (and still does) as a mother, the toll it can take on someone's mental health, no matter how much you wanted to have a child. That was really good, in my opinion, as was the fact that therapy and couples therapy was included in a very positive and natural way.
And the reason I called this self-help fiction is because it's overall a really healthy/positive journey of self-discovery and letting go of what doesn't serve you. If you've ever struggled (or are currently struggling) with parenthood or friendships, and you're looking for a book you can feel reflected in with a wholesome ending, then I think you might enjoy this book, for real.
However... I'm afraid it was also very much #whitepeopleproblems. And that might be fine if you relate to the particular demographic of white cis straight middle class USAmerican stay at home mom living in suburbia! As someone not from the USA, though, the depictions of some of these women felt cartoonish. Not because I haven't seen enough to know that people like that exist (hello Karens); I'm just not interested in reading about them and I found myself rolling my eyes a lot. Ironically, it's great commentary on why the "agreement" of letting the man be the bread-winner while the woman stays at home to look after the house and children not only is barely a choice at all, but also puts women at a disadvantage. We see husbands who cheat, who lie, who are barely there for his children, who manipulate, who are unsatisfied. I mean, and I say this with some compassion, no wonder these women are catty bitches who have nothing better to do than create drama in the school parking lot! What else can they do? What else can they feel in control of?
Even in the case of our protagonist, we see that her husband encourages her to pursue her dreams and is attentive to her needs... but we're also told that at one point he failed to do that under the assumption that "agreeing" to be a SAHM meant handling everything on your own because "moms know instinctively" how to do these things (NO), which clearly took a toll on Fallon. And although I commend the author for showing growth, we also see him in the present being frustrated that Fallon hasn't been keeping an immaculate house even though she's now both a SAHM and entrepreneur, and Fallon thinking that her husband's love language must be "acts of service" because he likes it when she cooks and picks up his dry cleaning. No, girl, that's just the patriarchy! Oh, and he tells her to delete her app to meet friends because they need to keep up appearances, suggesting that she should just volunteer somewhere to find new friends, because obviously she's just staying home doing nothing all day, right? This is something that Fallon does think, but doesn't say. I think there was an attempt at questioning this system, but it wasn't fully realized. Fallon even thinks she could have saved on couples therapy and just reread "Men are from Mars, women are from Venus". If that's the kind of couples therapy they got...
This kind of internalized heterosexism is also baked into two "meet cutes" that are narrated, where a man causes an accident (not on purpose, but out of carelessness - which is almost as bad) on the woman, and then tries to "make up" for it by pursuing the woman, who ofc ends up falling in love with him. Sorry, but if you break my toes, the last thing I'll want to do is screw you.
Racism is also implied, but never actually addressed. Fallon's best friend Avery is a Black woman she met in college, who isn't part of the moms group. Fallon has also stayed in touch with Mel, a Mexican-American woman and single mother who was part of the group for a while before moving away. We are told that the group, except for Fallon, was always rude and judgy to Mel, allegedly on account of her divorced, working mom status. Are we sure there's nothing else there, considering she was the only woman of colour in the group? So, again, this book is very much about and for white people, even if two people of colour are presented in a positive light.
There's also a storyline of adoption, and although an adoptee's feelings on their own adoption are always valid, I can't say I liked the way some of these thoughts were presented and never challenged. Specifically, the idea that a character's hurt about her adoptive parents not telling her she was adopted until she found out would translate to negative feelings about being an adoptive parent themselves. This was a really strange reasoning... you can choose to tell your child they were adopted (and you should!!). I also thought it was supremely weird that the character's adoption file would list all of her birth mother's (European, obvi) ancestry like she was a bred puppy. I wouldn't be surprised if that actually happens in the USA, but it's very messed up.
Finally, in terms of plot, it felt very much like "a day in the life". Overall it's well written, save for some unnecessarily reiterated ideas (like Fallon thinking about people being surprised she married a gynecologist), which made it a quick read. But it's about a specific woman's daily problems, with the main themes of friendship, parenthood, entrepreneurship, and adoption. It felt both like a lot and not enough.
To end on a good note, I did resonate a lot with the main topic of a friendship break-up and the process Fallon goes through, so I don't regret reading it. And if you take away anything from this book, I think it needs to be that friendships sustain us. Go check on a friend now.
The protagonist was a fan of self-help books, and it makes sense because this book felt like self-help fiction (not necessarily in a bad way!).
I wasn't familiar with the genre "mom-com" and, as a single woman with no wishes to be a mother, I probably wouldn't have picked this book on my own. But I received it as my first widget, and I couldn't say no. So thanks to NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books for sending me this in exchange for an honest review.
I couldn't say no for a second reason, and it's that the topic is very dear to me. We talk too much about romantic break-ups and not enough about friendship break-ups, and how they can be just as painful and hard to get over. And it's not even clean, loud break-ups, either, but the passive-aggressive ghosting, as well as just failing to be there. Where are the songs about a friendship gone cold?
Fallon finds herself wondering what went wrong when she realizes that not only her best friend has been ghosting and avoiding her for some time, but she's also been leaving her out of group hangs. Willing to forgive and forget, Fallon decides to try to bring the group closer while attempting to get her chocolate business started. But some things just can't be healed by a suburban Mexican fiesta...
Let's start with the good stuff. I deeply related to Fallon as far as the topic of friendship went. Her feelings and thoughts, at points contradictory, were so genuine to what losing someone feels like: missing them and wanting them back, feeling like it's your fault, wanting to go back to the good times, yet slowly realizing that it wasn't actually all good, feeling bitter and thinking about all their flaws, trash-talking about them. It's kind of annoying to read from the outside looking in because you're like "which one is it??", but - I've been there! I get it. And then also feeling like it's really hard to meet new people as you get older, whether to date or to befriend.
I also thought it was a very real portrayal of motherhood, ugly bits included. Fallon loves her daughter, but is still cognizant of how much she struggled (and still does) as a mother, the toll it can take on someone's mental health, no matter how much you wanted to have a child. That was really good, in my opinion, as was the fact that therapy and couples therapy was included in a very positive and natural way.
And the reason I called this self-help fiction is because it's overall a really healthy/positive journey of self-discovery and letting go of what doesn't serve you. If you've ever struggled (or are currently struggling) with parenthood or friendships, and you're looking for a book you can feel reflected in with a wholesome ending, then I think you might enjoy this book, for real.
However... I'm afraid it was also very much #whitepeopleproblems. And that might be fine if you relate to the particular demographic of white cis straight middle class USAmerican stay at home mom living in suburbia! As someone not from the USA, though, the depictions of some of these women felt cartoonish. Not because I haven't seen enough to know that people like that exist (hello Karens); I'm just not interested in reading about them and I found myself rolling my eyes a lot. Ironically, it's great commentary on why the "agreement" of letting the man be the bread-winner while the woman stays at home to look after the house and children not only is barely a choice at all, but also puts women at a disadvantage. We see husbands who cheat, who lie, who are barely there for his children, who manipulate, who are unsatisfied. I mean, and I say this with some compassion, no wonder these women are catty bitches who have nothing better to do than create drama in the school parking lot! What else can they do? What else can they feel in control of?
Even in the case of our protagonist, we see that her husband encourages her to pursue her dreams and is attentive to her needs... but we're also told that at one point he failed to do that under the assumption that "agreeing" to be a SAHM meant handling everything on your own because "moms know instinctively" how to do these things (NO), which clearly took a toll on Fallon. And although I commend the author for showing growth, we also see him in the present being frustrated that Fallon hasn't been keeping an immaculate house even though she's now both a SAHM and entrepreneur, and Fallon thinking that her husband's love language must be "acts of service" because he likes it when she cooks and picks up his dry cleaning. No, girl, that's just the patriarchy! Oh, and he tells her to delete her app to meet friends because they need to keep up appearances, suggesting that she should just volunteer somewhere to find new friends, because obviously she's just staying home doing nothing all day, right? This is something that Fallon does think, but doesn't say. I think there was an attempt at questioning this system, but it wasn't fully realized. Fallon even thinks she could have saved on couples therapy and just reread "Men are from Mars, women are from Venus". If that's the kind of couples therapy they got...
This kind of internalized heterosexism is also baked into two "meet cutes" that are narrated, where a man causes an accident (not on purpose, but out of carelessness - which is almost as bad) on the woman, and then tries to "make up" for it by pursuing the woman, who ofc ends up falling in love with him. Sorry, but if you break my toes, the last thing I'll want to do is screw you.
Racism is also implied, but never actually addressed. Fallon's best friend Avery is a Black woman she met in college, who isn't part of the moms group. Fallon has also stayed in touch with Mel, a Mexican-American woman and single mother who was part of the group for a while before moving away. We are told that the group, except for Fallon, was always rude and judgy to Mel, allegedly on account of her divorced, working mom status. Are we sure there's nothing else there, considering she was the only woman of colour in the group? So, again, this book is very much about and for white people, even if two people of colour are presented in a positive light.
There's also a storyline of adoption, and although an adoptee's feelings on their own adoption are always valid, I can't say I liked the way some of these thoughts were presented and never challenged. Specifically, the idea that a character's hurt about her adoptive parents not telling her she was adopted until she found out would translate to negative feelings about being an adoptive parent themselves. This was a really strange reasoning... you can choose to tell your child they were adopted (and you should!!). I also thought it was supremely weird that the character's adoption file would list all of her birth mother's (European, obvi) ancestry like she was a bred puppy. I wouldn't be surprised if that actually happens in the USA, but it's very messed up.
Finally, in terms of plot, it felt very much like "a day in the life". Overall it's well written, save for some unnecessarily reiterated ideas (like Fallon thinking about people being surprised she married a gynecologist), which made it a quick read. But it's about a specific woman's daily problems, with the main themes of friendship, parenthood, entrepreneurship, and adoption. It felt both like a lot and not enough.
To end on a good note, I did resonate a lot with the main topic of a friendship break-up and the process Fallon goes through, so I don't regret reading it. And if you take away anything from this book, I think it needs to be that friendships sustain us. Go check on a friend now.