Back in March, I read Firefly Lane by Kristin Hannah. This was the first book I read for the National Federation of the Blind Cambridge Chapter book club I joined/helped form. Actually so far it’s the only book I’ve read for that book club because I missed April’s meeting, and I’m going to miss May’s because of graduation. I talked about this book back in my March roundup post, but two months later, I still have some pretty strong feelings about this book, and I just got the sequel out of the library, so I wanted to share my thoughts on this book so that I can talk about the sequel with you all next week.
A quick disclaimer. This book is women’s fiction. Women’s fiction is not my genre. I almost invariably get frustrated and angry with it. So if you generally like women’s fiction, take my opinions with a handful of salt.
A few years ago, I read The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah, and I adored it. It may be one of my all time favorite books, and I’m considering including it in my summer rereadathon. The Nightingale is an absolutely fabulously incredible book, and if you haven’t read it you need to. I tell you this because you need to read it and I also want to explain that I went into Firefly Lane with really high expectations. And I was disappointed.
Firefly Lane tells the story of Kate and Tully, starting when they become friends at fourteen and following them through thirty years of friendship, betrayal, and life in general. Kate comes from a pretty normal, stable home, but she’s a bit of a geek and is having social trouble at school. Tully comes from a broken home, but she’s super popular, so it’s an unlikely friendship, but it’s a strong and close friendship. Tully is definitely the dominant one in the friendship, controlling a lot of what the girls do—and later what they do as college students and then adult women—and Kate goes along with it all. And then, of course, one of them betrays the other.
The best part of the book was the writing. Kristin Hannah is a great writer, and that was 100% reflected in this book. The scenes were vivid, and the emotions were raw. And you could feel the time period in the ambiance of the book, which is one of my favorite things.
I have a number of problems with the book, but my biggest problem is that it felt very tropy, and so it was very predictable. No, I didn’t predict exactly what was going to happen from the very start of the book, but I had a good idea of what was coming before it did, and nothing that did happen was a surprise. And not in a good way. This was compounded by the fact that neither of the girls changed as characters over the course of the book, particularly with their interactions with each other. Now I understand that with certain people, particularly childhood friends, you might always behave a certain way, but in fiction, we expect some character development, and we never see it in this book. Even in the ending, after everything, the characters are still behaving exactly the way they were in the beginning. Kate is still totally accepting of and accommodating to Tully’s flaws. Tully is still running away and also dominating everything.
I am willing to keep an open mind about this going into the sequel, which picks up where the ending left off. Maybe we will see some character development after what happened in the end of Firefly Lane. If that’s the case, it will probably have a redeeming effect on this book. I’ll let you know.
I want to talk briefly about the ending of this book. There’s a betrayal, Kate and Tully get mad at each other, and then a tragedy brings them back together again as friends. I’m not spoiling anything, all that’s on the back cover of the book. The tragedy is possibly the most clichéd thing in the book. I’m not going to say what it is, but you can probably guess. Again, it wasn’t a surprise, but I admit I was balling my eyes out by the end, so it did pack an emotional punch. In the author’s note at the end of the book, Kristin Hannah talks about this same tragedy happening in her own family, and while I completely understand the need to write about it, it felt shoehorned into the book (especially so because it came from a personal experience). I’m not trying to diminish what happened to Kristin Hannah’s family by any means, but I think her personal experience with this aspect of the book hampered the ending of Firefly Lane.
This is a lot of negative commentary on this book, and I could keep ranting about it, but I want to emphasize again that this is just my opinion, and I want you to be able to form your own opinion, if you haven’t already. And as I said before, the writing in this book is great, and I was emotionally invested in the characters, and I do want to read the sequel. So while there’s plenty about this book that didn’t work for me, it isn’t terrible, and if you’re a fan of women’s fiction, this may be just the book for you. In fact, I know a lot of people who really, really liked it.
I have the sequel out from the library now, so I’ll probably be reading that in the next couple weeks, and I’ll be back to talk about what I think then. If you haven’t read Firefly Lane, I hope this review is helpful to you deciding if you want to give it a try. And if you do read it, or if you’ve already read it, I’d love to know what you think.