The Best of Friends

Gather initial thoughts and broad opinions about the book.

1. The Best of Friends includes moments of unlikely coincidence, such as Dani and Andrew’s anonymous online connection. How do these coincidences affect your reading of the story’s themes and emotional realism? Do they deepen the novel’s complexity or strain its credibility?

2. Did you find the solution to the central mystery effective? Was it believable, surprising, dramatically satisfying, etc.?

3. As an account of a grieving mother with complicated feelings about her child, compare the novel’s effectiveness to others by Lucinda Berry, such as Saving Noah.

Encourage readers to connect the book’s themes and characters with their personal experiences.

1. How does the novel’s subject matter—the sudden loss of a loved one, troubled children, domestic secrets and betrayals—resonate with your own life experiences?

2. Do you recognize any of the characters as similar to people you have known?

3. Which of the novel’s three narrators do you identify or empathize with the most? Which one is most different from you or hard to sympathize with?

4. In your view, are Kendra’s attempts to keep “parenting” her dead son through spiritualism a positive development, or a negative one?

Examine the book’s relevance to societal issues, cultural trends, and ethical dilemmas. 

1. In your view, how might the novel’s events support a particular side of the issue of gun control?

2. Domestic violence, whether overt or psychological, plays an important role in The Best of Friends. What does the novel say about how spousal abuse can cause long-term damage to a family or community?

Dive into the book’s structure, characters, themes, and use of narrative techniques.

1. The Best of Friends comments on character and society by way of gaps in the narrators’ reliability. Discuss some glaring examples of this.

2. Discuss how the author, through subtle use of language, gives each of the three narrators a distinctive voice.

3. The novel’s three narrators, even in the midst of a crisis, continue to comment on the beauty and comfort of their homes and on their talents as hostesses. How is this used to develop their characters or to satirize them?

4. What symbolic roles do objects and spaces—such as Sawyer’s bedroom, the Schultzes’ living room, or the boys’ phones—play in The Best of Friends? How do these symbols reflect the characters’ emotional states and the novel’s larger themes of grief, repression, and control?

Encourage imaginative and creative connections to the book’s content and themes.

1. Argue the prosecutor’s case against Caleb or, alternatively, the defense that Bryan’s “cutthroat” lawyer might make for him. What approach do you find yourself taking?

2. Compose an ending for the novel that describes Andrew’s response to the end of his online relationship with “May.” How does this affect his marriage?