One of the delights of being in a bookgroup is when you find yourself loving a book that you would never have chosen otherwise. One of the burdens of being in a bookgroup is when you find yourself gritting your teeth to get through a book that you would never have chosen otherwise. City of Friends falls into the latter category.
The narrative revolves between four middle-aged, successful, middle-class London-based women, who met years earlier in an economics course at university, where they were vastly outnumbered by the other male students. Gaby is an investment banker, married with three children. Melissa is a management consultant and single mother of a teenaged son. Beth is an author and academic, expert in business psychology and in a relationship with a younger woman, while Stacey is a senior partner at a private equity firm, married but without children, and suddenly called upon to care for her mother with dementia. Does that entice you to follow them over 327 pages? I didn’t think so.
I’m not a reader who has to like the characters, but I do need to have a frisson of interest in them. I’m aware that Trollope is trying to illustrate modern life and dilemmas – the role of daughters in caring for aging parents, step-children, flexible working, ‘having it all’- but really, I found that I just didn’t care.
If I dislike a book, I don’t usually review it, especially if it is a new writer. But Joanna Trollope OBE has sold more than 7 million copies of her books, so I think that she can do without this reader.
My rating: 4/10
Sourced from: CAE Bookgroups.
The Resident Judge of Port Phillip 
Ouch, but you know… I loved her earlier books, but the last one I read was only so-so, and I stopped reading her after that.
I have the same question as Davida. Although I have not read City of Friends, in the 1990s I loved Joanna Trollope’s novels. Now I am really disappointed that Trollope is older and is possibly writing less attractively.
Me too! I like her early work, but lost interest about 2004.