The Friendship List

 The Friendship List by Susan Mallery  384 pages

Ellen Fox and Unity Leandre have been best friends “practically since birth,” but lately they have been in a rut.

Ellen hasn’t had the easiest of lives. Pregnant at seventeen, she has given up love and sex in order to raise her soon, Cooper, who is now seventeen. They do okay. All she wants out of the rest of her life is for Coop to go to college and not have a great life—for him to fly as she was never able. But one afternoon, she overhears Coop talking with a friend that he may not get to the university of his choice because his mother needs him too much.

But Coop is wrong, Besides Unity, Ellen has Keith Kinne, a coach at the same school where she teaches, and, not ideally, Coop’s coach.  I can’t say I know what sport Coop played, but I’m sure it was mentioned somewhere.  Not only are Ellen and Keith co-workers, Keith also has a seventeen year old, a daughter he is raising on his own after her mother abandons them.

Unity is Ellen’s opposite in almost everything but the rut. She lives in her late husband’s mother’s house, still filled with all his things. She even sleeps in his childhood room, unwilling and unable to let go of her grief. Emotionally she hasn’t progressed much in the three years Stuart was killed in action in Afghanistan.

One afternoon, after a fight, Unity creates “The Friendship List,”  a bucket-like list that will prove to Cooper that she can get along without him just fine. The women “make a pact to challenge each other to use the summer to make some changes.” For Ellen, it all begins with a bus trip to visit colleges with  Keith, Cooper and the rest of the senior athletes.  For Unity, it begins with meeting the great-nephew of one of ther clients and to think about boxing up Stuart’s things.

“The Friendship List” is a fun, breezy read, with a few moments of drama thrown in to make it a complete story.  For me, there were way too many sex scenes, and it seemed that sex domainted the second half of the novel.  Therefore, “The Friendship List”  receives 3 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.