Kind of different from a lot I see listed, but a friend and I started a Besties Book Club a few years back when all she asked of me for Christmas was a book that meant a lot to me. Since I had to be extra (we’ve known each other 30+ years and are like sisters), I gave her 3 (The Bell Jar, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, and Candide).

This year, she asked me to read “Spare,” by Prince Harry. I was somewhat reluctant, but finally unpacked an Echo dot I got free and listened while doing other things. I think a lot about how he explained the Royals cooperate with the press, including feeding negative stories about each other to take heat off themselves.

What’s more, I listened to “Counting the Cost” by Jill Duggar and it struck me how similar their stories were. The betrayals by family, being dependent financially, expected to obey well into adulthood, narcissistic relatives, relatives caring more about PR than their closest family members, and on and on. It was stunning how similar these books were. I started Britney Spears’ memoir, but needed a break from the horrid families for a bit and went back to novels.

My friend and I look very different on the outside but both come from crappy families, so we’re two more wildly different people who could relate so much to these books. It’s also poignant for me because in the middle of this I had a lot of family drama and my friend was there for me. Just as it was resolving & out of the blue she said that she wasn’t “doing friendships” anymore, they don’t work for her. I suspect this is only partly to do with my drama and largely to do with her not good marriage and the demands she, like most women, have to do all the housework, childcare, cooking, shopping, management, scheduling, etc.

These three books will forever be associated with my own heartache, both from our shared experience of crappy families and from the loss of my closest friend who understood and uplifted me (and I her) so well because of our similar experiences.

Read it 25-30 years ago and it’s one of the few where the plot does stick with me. Beautiful and painful to read.