The Friendship Fight

By: Allie Sarah

Many thanks to Plunge Into Books Tours and Allie Sarah for the gifted copy of this book!

ABOUT THE BOOK

𝐖𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐑𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐚’𝐬 𝐟𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐥𝐲 𝐝𝐫𝐚𝐦𝐚 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐉𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐞’𝐬 𝐛𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐟𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐝 𝐝𝐨𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐢𝐫 𝐛𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐤𝐞𝐞𝐩 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐭𝐰𝐨 𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐞𝐫 𝐜𝐥𝐨𝐬𝐞 𝐟𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐬 𝐚𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐭, 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐲’𝐯𝐞 𝐠𝐨𝐭 𝐚 𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐲 𝐭𝐨 𝐫𝐢𝐯𝐚𝐥 𝐑𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐨 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐉𝐮𝐥𝐢𝐞𝐭’𝐬…

It’s fitting that they’re reading Romeo and Juliet in class, because Raina Cohen’s story is most certainly not having a happy ending. She’d ask her not-so-secret crush Jesse Ashcroft for his opinion, but the formerly close duo haven’t spoken in days. Instead, Jesse’s been hanging out with his best friend, Nicole, who would happily ensure that Raina met the same fate as Juliet.

But thanks to meddling teachers, Raina’s now stuck spending all her free time with the two people she’s been trying to avoid. And with her mom breathing down her back about, well, everything, she’s trying to balance family, religion, schoolwork, oh, and the simple fact that she can’t get Jesse out of her head. It’s a slow journey to rebuilding their friendship — and possibly even more than that — especially with Nicole determined to stand in the middle of the road. But when Raina’s father’s job is put in jeopardy, it’ll take the unlikely trio of Raina, Jesse, and Nicole working together to write their own stories.

MY REVIEW

For me, this book was about more than just friendship.

This takes place while the characters are in high school so the writing fits it perfectly, though at times I felt like Jesse spoke like he was older than high school aged. The sweet things he said to Raina were *chef’s kiss*! Where was a guy like that when I was in high school?!

While Nicole and Raina didn’t like each other at first, and never actually became besties, I did enjoy the reasoning why – it is true to how high school kids feel (and sometimes even adults). I also really enjoyed the bigger friendship group as a whole.

There was so much beautiful representation of the Jewish culture in this book. My father is Jewish but since I don’t have a relationship with him, I never learned anything about the culture. I learned so much in this book. The author did a great job of having her friends be open to learning more about her culture and her way of doing things. I related to her on some aspect because there was a time I questioned some of the things that my former religion said or things we had to follow. Raina is trying to find her path while still being respectful of what she was taught and of her mother.

All in all, this was a well written book by this young author. I’m excited to see where she goes with her writing career.

If you’re interested in checking the book out, you can do so here.