Book Review: City of friends - J. Trollope

"Work and life aren't in opposition to each other, they enrich each other."

The message I got out of this book, or maybe that I did want to get out of it, it 's that women can juggle both career and family and seek power and it's ok to want to do so. It's also ok to say "I'm struggling" and the modern society and businesses shoule embrace helping people in reaching a good work-life balance in order to be successful.
In summary, I found this novel an inn to the successful working modern woman.
Then, it is also a book about friendship between women, even if it's a bit if an on-and-off kind of friendship, which actually makes it even closer to reality.
Of the four women of the book, I loved Gabi, who is not afraid to say that she loves her job and that it somehow defines her. I felt very close to her view on this and it was great and refreshing to have a character in a novel that combines a career woman with a mother and wife modern figure.
Pleasant and easy to read, I'd recommend this novel to all the working mums as an anti-guilt remedy.
I'd also recommend it to all the "bosses" that want to be modern and to all the men who wants to put themselves in a woman's shoes for once.

Overall rating:  6,5     Plot: 7     Writing style: 6      Cover:  9

Title: City of friends

Author: Joanna Trollope
Publisher: Mantle
Pages: 336
Publication year: 2017

The Plot:

The day Stacey Grant loses her job feels like the last day of her life. Or at least, the only life she'd ever known. For who was she if not a City high-flyer, Senior Partner at one of the top private equity firms in London? As Stacey starts to reconcile her old life with the new - one without professional achievements or meetings, but instead, long days at home with her dog and ailing mother, waiting for her successful husband to come home - she at least has The Girls to fall back on. Beth, Melissa and Gaby. The girls, now women, had been best friends from the early days of university right through their working lives, and for all the happiness and heartbreaks in between. But these career women all have personal problems of their own, and when Stacey's redundancy forces a betrayal to emerge that was supposed to remain secret, their long cherished friendships will be pushed to their limits . . .

The Author:

Joanna Trollope has written several highly-acclaimed contemporary novels: The Choir, A Village Affair, A Passionate Man, The Rector's Wife, The Men and the Girls, A Spanish Lover, The Best of Friends, Next of Kin, Other People's Children, Marrying the Mistress, Girl from the South and Friday Nights. Other People's Children has been shown on BBC television as a major drama serial. Under the name of Caroline Harvey she writes romantic historical novels. She has also written a study of women in the British Empire, Britannia's Daughters. Joanna was born in Gloucestershire and lives in London. She was appointed OBE in the 1996 Queen's Birthday Honours List for services to literature.