Even best friends have secrets…

Synopsis

One New Year’s Eve, Georgie James and her friends come up with a genius plan to help them stick to their resolutions… They all write down secrets, seal them in envelopes and then post them to each other. The secrets will be revealed at the end of the year if they haven’t kept their resolutions.

It’s perfect. Except…

Georgie’s secret is BIG… and revealing it could destroy their friendships. She has no idea why she chose that one to write down. There are plenty of innocent things she could have said – even admitting she finds newcomer Raf incredibly annoying would have been better.

What she does know is that there’s no way she can let her secret be revealed. Which means she needs to keep her (nightmare) resolutions and, most importantly, get her envelope back before anyone can open it. Which, given she sent her secret to Raf, means spending a lot more time with him than she’d choose to…

A heartwarming romantic comedy for fans of Beth O’Leary and Mhairi McFarlane

My review

New Year’s resolutions are always started with the best intentions, but also fall apart as quickly as they were made.
But Georgie James and her best friends come up with a genius plan to stick to them: they will all write down their secrets and post them to each other. And if they failed their resolutions, those secrets will be revealed.
Plans made infused by alcohol is never a good idea, especially as Georgie writes down a secret that big that could destroy everything…
So when she learns that Raf is in possession of her secret, she is determined to have that envelope back in her hands, even if that means spending more and more time with him.

I am always a bit envious when friends, eve the fictional ones, are have been best friends like forever. That is a kind of friendship I don’t have (now, don’t pity me, I have best friends, but the friendships I had in my childhood didn’t stand the test of time 😊) and it amazes me how that love is still there, no matter how many years have passed.

In this book, we have four best friends, and their partners, coming together regularly, spending time together and find comfort in each other’s presence. So obviously they also spend New year’s Eve together, with the mandatory glass of champagne (or even more glasses).
These friends know everything about each other (or at least they think they do), and support each other through everything.
So it made perfectly sense that they would come up with a plan to succeed in their resolutions. Because haven’t we all had resolutions and failed at them, some quicker than others?

I found it a bit a dangerous plan, to use secrets as a ‘blackmail’ to keep up with their resolutions, but of course the stakes had to be high in order to make the friends succeed.
And while I think I would write a silly secret, I could understand while a bit inebriated, Georgie would write down her biggest secret.

A secret that admittedly, didn’t come as a great shock to me, as I found there were enough breadcrumbs spread around the book.
And even if I at moments found that Georgie could have had several opportunities to come clean about it over the years, I could also understand why she didn’t.
Because no matter how strong a friendship is, it can take one crack to break it all apart…

The focus in this book is mainly on Georgie and her quest to get the envelope back from Raf. And seeing them spending time together was lovely, and we could easily see the developments there. But I also couldn’t forget what Georgie’s plan was and I was a bit afraid of the reaction when that plan would come out, because it for sure would!

And the other focus was on Poppy, as she also has a secret she is afraid to vocalize. Yet her secret is more of a fear than a real secret..
Perhaps her ‘secret’ was one that most people can relate to, as it’s something that is more likely to be happening to any of us (or at least the doubts and fears are, not the actual fact of it 😊).

I found it a bit a pity that while there are four of best friends, the focus was only on two of them. Because it would for sure would have been great to also have a better insight in all of the friends, and not just Georgie and Poppy.
But on the other hand, I also understand that choices need to be made while writing a story!

There were some moments that made me roll my eyes over the behaviour of the protagonists, as I was thinking ‘just get a grip’. But when there is so much at stake, it isn’t easy to stay rational about it, and you may act out of character.

While reading, I also had to have a few snickering moments, as some resolutions were so typical but also so crazy (because resolutions are about making things better, not to make things ‘worse’ in a way). Yet it was also funny how all the friends were adamant of not backing out, and documenting every time they resist to just give up.

But I liked the most to see the works of real friendship, even at the most difficult test. And I liked the impartiality of it too. because it’s easy to point fingers and chose sides, but real friends don’t do that.
We see how friendships are being tested, and how trust can be broken. But with a friendship so strong, is a mistake of the past, a kept secret, worthy of throwing away everything friends have been through together?

And that is the real beauty of the story, because things in this book don’t always go that easy, just like real life. But some connections are worth of the fight, even if at first instance they broke our hearts….