{ "item_title" : "We Used to Be Friends", "item_author" : [" Amy Spalding "], "item_description" : "Two best friends grow up--and grow apart--in Amy Spalding's innovative contemporary YA novel. Told in dual timelines--half of the chapters moving forward in time and half moving backward--We Used to Be Friends explores the most traumatic breakup of all: that of childhood besties. At the start of their senior year in high school, James (a girl with a boy's name) and Kat are inseparable, but by graduation, they're no longer friends. James prepares to head off to college as she reflects on the dissolution of her friendship with Kat while, in alternating chapters, Kat thinks about being newly in love with her first girlfriend and having a future that feels wide open. Over the course of senior year, Kat wants nothing more than James to continue to be her steady rock, as James worries that everything she believes about love and her future is a lie when her high-school sweetheart parents announce they're getting a divorce. Funny, honest, and full of heart, We Used to Be Friends tells of the pains of growing up and growing apart. Amy Spalding knows that best friendships are love stories, and this one is complex, earnest, and unflinching. A must-read for anyone who's ever had or lost a friend. --Becky Albertalli, New York Times bestselling author of Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda", "item_img_path" : "https://covers2.booksamillion.com/covers/bam/1/41/973/866/1419738666_b.jpg", "price_data" : { "retail_price" : "17.99", "online_price" : "17.99", "our_price" : "17.99", "club_price" : "17.99", "savings_pct" : "0", "savings_amt" : "0.00", "club_savings_pct" : "0", "club_savings_amt" : "0.00", "discount_pct" : "10", "store_price" : "" } }

Overview

Customers Also Bought

Details

We Used to Be Friends

At the beginning of their senior year, Kat and James (her parents were convinced she’d be a boy) are inseparable. At the end? Well, the title of Amy Spalding’s latest novel is a bit of a spoiler: We Used to Be Friends. These longtime BFFs both end up bruised and bewildered by their friendship breakup. As James observes in the novel’s opening chapter, “It was easy to believe that romance was the only heartache out there.”

Kat’s year starts when, after splitting from her boyfriend, she starts to develop feelings for a girl named Quinn. Between exploring her bisexual identity, idealizing her new girlfriend and embarking on a campaign to take down the heteronormative prom king and queen competition at school, Kat doesn’t seem to have much time for James anymore. In the meantime, James hasn’t told Kat that she’s dealing with her parents’ separation and her own decision to break up with a boy with whom, once upon a time, she imagined her own happily ever after. 

James’ and Kat’s stories unfold in alternating chapters and in opposite chronologies. Kat’s narrative starts at the beginning of the school year and moves forward, while James’ story begins the summer after senior year and goes backward. Each girl’s narrative voice is unique, introspective and often funny as they each navigate this pivotal year of their lives, at first together and then increasingly on their own or with others.

By the time Kat and James meet in the middle of their timelines, readers will have developed an appreciation for the ways relationships can evolve and sometimes even end, often without any kind of crisis or anyone to blame. It’s rare to find a novel that treats friendship so perceptively and acknowledges its potential end so truthfully.