Whittingbourne is one of those charming English towns where families live happily ever after.

I could not imagine the ending and as usual, Trollope takes everything into account as she weaves the story. I'm so much a part of the story that I feel as though I am right there with her characters when I read Trollope's writing---it's always a total escape into the world she is producing with her words. ( )

When one couple's marriage ends, the results snowball through a small English town. Sophy, the couple's 16- year old, smart and sensitive daughter is particularly disoriented and feels abandoned by her father who leaves home. Fortunately, her unconventional, creative and wise grandmother Vi lives in town and helps provide space and sanity. Gus, her younger friend and his family are accommodating and supportive as well.

I've always enjoyed Trollope's masterful storytelling about the intricacies of families, friends and relationships in general. The Best of Friends is another winner. ( )

The main protagonist is sixteen-year-old Sophy. Her parents seem to spend most of their time arguing, and it’s become increasingly bitter...

The bulk of the book takes place in just a couple of months. Sophy is a likeable girl, although I never felt that I really got to know her. Joanna Trollope isn’t the greatest at characterisation; nevertheless the situations and descriptions of events managed to pull on my emotions quite strongly.

The writing is terse and well-paced, the conversations mostly believable; places and appearances are described with just enough sensory detail to make them memorable without so much as to become boring.

While there’s a sense in which this is a coming-of-age story for Sophy, it’s also classic women’s fiction of the kind that could be enjoyed by older teenage bookworms as well as adults. There’s some ‘strong’ language, but although plenty of bedroom scenes are mentioned, there are, thankfully, no details.

Three and a half stars would be fairer. ( )

Not my favorite Joanna Trollope novel, because too many of the main characters are too unsympathetic. I admire Trollope's refusal to people her books with the sort of "pictures of perfection" that made Jane Austen feel so sick when she came across them in the course of her own reading; but if everyone's the moral equivalent of a cheap candy bar (not always bad, but sure to turn into an icky mess under the slightest heat or pressure), I start to question why I'm bothering to read.

I did appreciate learning that there's a place in the world where people say they're "as cross as a bag of cats." That's a keeper.

I was a little baffled by Trollope's description of strawberries "served the American way...with lemon juice, sugar, and sour cream." That may be an American way -- I'm guessing this is a Southern dish -- but it can't be the American way if I've lived in America all my life and never even heard of it, let alone tried it. Specifically, I live in a part of America whose 12-month growing season gives us higher strawberry yields per acre than any other growing area, not that I want to brag or anything. (Oh, of course I want to brag. It's fun. Go ahead and try it. I don't mind.)

Not that the whole book's about strawberries, or that my whole review should be. This being a Joanna Trollope novel, there's lots of British food and lots of very civilized people trying awfully hard to find happiness if that would be quite all right with everyone. There's also a bittersweet ending -- Trollope's endings are always at least half happy, but rarely more than half. And there's wistful wisdom sprinkled throughout, such as:

Perhaps it was better not to think of that evening, because the trouble about things going wrong was that they then soured the memory of things that had gone right before.

Boy, do they. ( )