Dreaming of a New Day

I spent most of yesterday and all of last night finishing the “Firefly Lane” by Kristin Hannah. I cried… a lot. I think it’s my favorite book of this summer... well, at least one of them (^_^). 

The writing style is simple in its own way, beautifully so. It takes advantage of the tone two girls, best friends, would take I think in a way that's honest and yet endlessly complicated. TullyandKate, two girls, best friends forever… They’re like the moon and sun, and yet they complement each other so well. She literally wrote these characters as if they were two parts of a whole, each having something the other lacks. The story is so realistic, and I honestly think: amazingly beautiful. And when I say realistic, I do NOT mean the everyday life sort of realism, but the realism of emotion; it was the emotional quality of this book that pulled me in, and the wonderful and intriguing landscape created in the interactions between two “best friends for life.”

Here’s the book jacket’s summary:

“In the summer of 1974, Kate Mularkey has accepted her place at the bottom of the eighth-grade social food chain.  Then, to her amazement, the “coolest girl in the world” moves in across the street and wants to be her friend.  Tully Hart seems to have it all - beauty, brains, ambition.  On the surface they are as opposite as two people can be:  Kate, doomed to be forever uncool, with a loving family who mortifies her at every turn; Tully, steeped in glamour and mystery, but with a secret that is destroying her.  They make a pact to be best friends forever; by summer’s end they’ve become TullyandKate.  Inseparable.

From the beginning, Tully is desperate to prove her worth to the world.  Abandoned by her mother at an early age, she longs to be loved unconditionally.  She will follow her own blind ambition to New York and around the globe, finding fame and success… and loneliness.

All Kate really wants is to fall in love and have children and live an ordinary life.  In her own quiet way, Kate is as driven as Tully.  What she doesn’t know is how being a wife and mother will change her… how she’ll lose sight of who she once was, and what she once wanted.  And how much she’ll envy her famous best friend…

For thirty years, Tully and Kate buoy each other through life, weathering the storms of friendship - jealousy, anger, hurt, resentment.  They think they’ve survived it all until a single act of betrayal tears them apart… and puts their courage and friendship to the ultimate test.”

And the betrayal was… interesting. It wasn’t what I was expecting at first. I loved the ending however. (^_^) And that’s all I’m saying on that matter. I don’t want to spoil.