Best Friends Forever

Final Interview

When I was finished reading Best Friends Forever, I had a talk with my mom about the book to wrap-up the reading assignment. First I told her what my opinions on the book were. I told her how I thought that the beginning was very slow and boring, but how it got more interesting towards the end of the book. I told her that this book had influenced me not only to be a better friend, but to choose better friends. I think this book does a good job at showing what its like when people truly care about you. I also told her that this book did not impress me as much as I hoped it would mostly because of the authors writing style. We talked about how the author literally mentions every single bit of sensory detail. She told me that she likes when books go into a lot of detail. I guess that was where we disagreed on liking the book. Its not necessarily that the book is bad, its just not my style. However, it is a best seller so I guess a lot of people must have liked it. I also told her how I was glad that I stuck with the book and waited until the ending because it was nice to see everything come together. After feeling so bad for Addie throughout the book, it was really nice to see her finally become happy. My mother says that the part that sticks out to her the most in this book is that even though Valerie left Addie as a teenager for the more popular kids, and really screwed Addie over, Addie was still able to forgive Valerie. I agreed with my mom about how influential that part of the book was. We came to the conclusion that family has similar characteristics in the fact that family can be so mean and ruthless to each other, but in the end, family is usually very good at forgiving each other. Personally, I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone. I didn't think this book was that bad, its just that I didn't think this book was that good either. There wasn't that much depth to the plot in my opinion. I would much rather recommend a book like The Hunger Games.

Best Friends Forever

My Impressions

I have recently come to a pretty interesting part of the book. After the author took a long time describing the childhood, now the author has moved into describing the teenage years. This part of the book tells about how Valerie (one of the main characters) got raped. During high school, even though the girls had drifted apart, Valerie told Addie (the other main character). Addie, having always been the shy/responsible one of the two, told her parents what had happened to Valerie. Her parents got the boy who raped Valerie in trouble, but since the boy was popular, the whole school turned against Addie for being a nark. For the rest of high school Addie was an outcast, even worse off then before. In college she didn't have much luck being popular either. She had to live at home and take care of her mother who was ill and dying. She ended up dropping out of school to be with her mother full time. In order to generate revenue, she sold little greeting cards with painting on them. After her mother passed away, she also began to take care of her brother who lived in a disability home not too far away from their house. The book gets a little confusing at times because it jumps around from time-period to time-period. However, now there is starting to be more action as the girls unravel and discuss the things that drove them apart so many years ago. Slowly but surely the author is showing the reader their growing friendship through gestures and words. I suspect Addie and Valerie will only grow closer throughout the rest of the book.