With Friends Like These by Alissa Lee (2025)
By the time I'd finished this hybrid of suspense thriller and lifelong friendship drama, I realized I'd enjoyed it a whole lot more than I ever expected I would.
Author Alissa Lee managed to expertly juggle the thriller end of it, while blending in incisive, deeply layered portraits of her five main characters. And I've always been helpless to resist a story that takes an expansive view of people who, as young adults have planned out their sky's-the-limit, world-is-ours-for-the-taking future, full of hope and promise. And then watch what befalls them as life happens, with all its curveballs, rollercoaster turns and reversals of fortune.
And so it was with Sara, Allie, Dina, Bee, Wesley and Claudine, six Harvard girls ,bright shining lights of their class. Until in their senior year. Claudine died in an accident swirling with unsettling questions as to what really happened. Now, twenty years later and into beginnings of middle age, the five surviving women still share one constant bond through their years of successes and failures - they continue their yearly 'Circus', a hunt-and-kill game they play among themselves amid the streets or New York. Sara and some of the others would just as soon opt out the game until it's revealed that the prize money fund set aside for this year's winner tops a million dollars. It's Game On for sure.
The game proceeds but not without uneasy, ominous events. Sara swears she spotted the supposedly dead Claudine, while an ambitious DA may reopen an investigation in her death. Generating even more anxiety, Bee and Wesley receive anonymous threats to publicly reveal the 'Circus' to the world at large.....and thereby forever damage their reputations and futures.
I'm aware that opinions on this book widely vary but I can only say I found every bit of it a compelling, page-turning read. And I salute author Lee for continuing on with the story even after the thriller aspects have been resolved. By that time I'd come to care enough about these characters to want some satisfying closure.....(and I'm totally fed up with recent books resorting to annoying abrupt finishes, as if the authors think those cinematic, cut-to-black endings will gain them a better shot at a movie deal. )
What else can I say? A well executed thriller-drama with a cast of characters worth staying with and delving into all the backstories. High recommendation, a great one to cozy up with during those upcoming cold nights.
4 stars (****).
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