Pick Up Her Best Friend Picturized By Sarah Mayberry Listed As Script

I generally enjoy Mayberry's writing, but this one just wasn't my favorite, The initial plotline of Amy restoring her beloved theater with help of her newly single best friend Quinn generally worked for me, While Quinn had been previously married to another close mutual friend, Lisa, the story initially made it sound like both had basically started to move on even though their marriage didn't work.


However, the book eventually started to feel like a love triangle, While it's good and believable that none of the characters here are eeevil people, the fact that all have good qualities and a history of friendship made this a sometimes awkward read.
The story had some great emotional moments to it, but it didn't really feel like romance to me, Amy and Quinn really are a good match, but their happiness comes at the expense of deeply hurting someone else who has been important to them.
For that reason, any happiness is tempered by sadness and empathy for Lisa's very obvious pain, A good friendstolovers story with a heaping dose of unrequited love by the h for the H tossed into the mix, I liked it, but I also thought the characters were kind of, . . bland.

/.for the quality writing and the realistic storyline, Oh my God! I just wanted to hit a few heads together!! And smack my forehead a couple of times, Another reviewer mentioned that some of the contrivances keeping Quinn and Amy apart were annoying, I'm inclined to agree. It just got in the way of their union,

It was however, really realistic, as one would expect from a Sarah Mayberry book,

Amy's desires and strong pull of attraction to Quinn was incredibly believable, Who hasn't ever felt that irresistible attraction when you're falling for a friend or anyone for that matter, and her internal debates for and against voicing her attraction was so true.


Quinn I understood that he had been blindsided by many of the events going on in the book, but sometimes I just wanted to hit him for his insensitivity, Seriously. Your best friend just told you that she loved you, and you couldn't give her your response And then he comes out fighting for her, and then I was: YES! You love her! Go for it! And then.
. . contrivances. They just made me want to tear my hair out in frustration, There was however, one last contrivance that I adored: when Amy's mum heard a sound out in their backyard and came out to investigate, You know the one, if you've read it, Hilarious!

So, apart from the stuff keeping Amy and Quinn apart, it was an adorable story, and their concerns were all so real, Hence, my rating. Complete waste of time and money, I don't care as much about the money, but I wish I could get the three hours of my life back, Maybe I'm just weird, but I didn't find anything about the writing extraordinary as so many readers here have indicated, I thought the writing was mediocre at best, There was no story development other than the constant longing by the heroine for the hero and the constant longing by the hero for his wife, I never got how or why the hero decides to stay with the heroine, Certainly it was NOT because he fell in love with her because there was never any indication of that whatsoever in this book, At best, the heroine was second best and a choice of last resort for the hero's battered pride, He knew he would lose her friendship if they didn't proceed to something more and he knew he could not forgive his wife for her betrayal, so he settled for the heroine because what the hell else was there to do She loved him after all, go with the path of least resistance.
Hello, almost at the very end of the book, right before the hero is about to go to the heroine, he feels the emotional pull and shared history with his wife as he is embracing her So when was he supposed to have fallen in love with the heroine when still at the very end he was feeling emotionally tied to his still wife The ending was so abrupt and so out of left field after that little scene with his wife.
I feel cheated and totally unsatisfied,

This is supposed to be a romance book Weird, because I never did see the romance develop, Maybe it's a new kind of category romance about unrequited love that remains so, except the hero decides to settle for second best in the end and ends up with the heroine even though he is still pining away for his adulterous wife because the heroine is available, loves him and is loyal to him and life is just easier that way.
I find that totally romantic, Notstar. . While this book is in no way a bad read, it was also not a memorable one, . A typical unrequited lovers,combined with friends turned lovers book which could have been much better but only ended up being an okay story, . For me this was a,star read. . here's to the reasons why, . first,  the pros:
It's actually quite well written
The major focus of the story was on the MCs,
The characters felt pretty real and it was quite angst ridden
Cons:
Though i could see how much Amy loved Quinn,not for once did i feel that quinn felt the same,it was like quinn chose her BECAUSE he and lisa didn't work out.
. like he was settling for the second best,
Amy had very low self respect, Almost for the entire length of the book, Amy kept on pining for her,hoping he would somehow reciprocate her love, .
There was also a bit of double standards, While we get to know that Quinn did sleep around somewhat,  about Amy,we just know that she was with a guy when quinn and lisa married, .
It seemed Amy had no personal life, . As if she held on to the hope that one day, quinn would finally realise that he loves her and then they will have their happily ever after, . And when the opportunity presented itself, she took it, . to me. . it was pathetic
About quinn,  not a male hero, i want my heroine to fall in love with, . to me what

he felt for Amy was just curiosity and lust, . not love. . he made out with Amy twice and once Amy confessed her feelings and all he could give as a reaction was a dialogue that it was a mistake and a blank face
I would have been a little bit satisfied if quinn had even a little bit of competetion vying for Amy's attention!.
. i mean almost the entire book was about Amy feelong jealous,amy feeling guilty, Amy feeling something for quinn, . but quinn just feels confusion, more confusion mingled with lust and wham,realizes he loved her all along but was afraid to tell her, . goes to tell Amy that, . . and after aboutsecs of playing hard to get,albeit seriously,Amy gives in, .
And out of all these they conveniently forget Lisa, . who was their best friend, . i wonder,after all that happened doesn't Amy feel even a little bit guilty Ex or not after all Lisa had been her best friend, . and by getting into a relationship with Lisa's ex, it was like Amy announcing, you had your chance, its now my turn, . so whatever little respect i gathered for Amy, its now gone,
Maybe if Amy didn't say anything and let Quinn come to that conclusion after a bit of jealousy display probably over some guy Amy was dating, then it would have been a great book for me.
. but the author chose to do it in the way that reminded me of the MB books, . Very good category romance about two lovely people who grew up next door to each other all their lives, This is the first Superromance of SM's that I have read, She usually does the Harlequin Blaze line instead, I hope that she does more Superromances because I liked how the focus was on the story and the characters, versus the rather forced mental lusting in the SM Blaze that I read.


My primary beef with Best Friend Romances is that most authors TELL me that the H/H are BFs, not SHOW me, Not so here. The H/H are bothyears of age in the story the hero is waiting for his divorce to finalize after a yr of separation from his soontobeex and I definitely got the feeling the H/H will always love each other and be each other's BFs no matter what comes their way when I finished the book.
I also liked how the soontobeex who is obviously a selfish, manipulative woman isn't totally villainized, despite the horrible things she did,stars
POV:rd person: Amy, Quinn
Sensuality: Warm/Hot

Amy Parker has been in love with her best friend foryears, Quinn Whitfield married Amy's friend Lisa, so he has been offlimits all this time, Now they are getting divorced and he's single, She still loves him, but he is her friend, She's been avoiding him foryears, but now he is in town helping her out and being in such close proximity is driving her crazy,

Hmm the story was well written, the characters were done fairly well, the story developed well, and the characters feelings were all plausible, Overall, it is a decent story, It just didn't get me too much, To me it was just your average Harlequin romance,



Overall impression: Wellwritten HQ with believable characters and fairly realistic plot development, Her Best Friend is a surprisingly grounded look at threeway triangle of friendsturnedlovers,

Stop reading here if you haven't read the book, It's definitely worth reading and I don't want my personal feeling to influence another readers first impressions,

Caveats and Spoilers: While the portrayal of the three main players was refreshing in many ways, the realism actually ended up detracting from the enjoyment for me.
I hereby admit to being a hypocrite! I keep saying I want realist portrayals of characters, then when I get it, I end up wishing we had a less qualified "HEA.
" My apologies.

The fact is, Amy will always be Quinn's second choice, He may have been attracted to her at, but he didn't act on it and was swept up in his relationship with beautiful Lisa, Even when he and Lisa split a few times during high school and college, he had no thought of Amy as anything other than a friend, There is simply no getting around the fact that he loved Lisa and would've been happy with their life if she hadn't screwed up so badly, Because of that, I guess I really wanted to hear Quinn say he'd been wrong, and Amy was his first choice all along, I know that's cliche, but it would have gone a long way to making me believe that Amy would be able to accept the situation and not someday resent it.
Instead, we get a realistic portrayal of people with complicated emotions moving on in life, Amy and Quinn are together not because they sought each other out, but only because of the actions of a third party, Lisa, That, to me, is a qualified HEA, Her Best Friend is a wonderful book, It combines my favorite theme friends to lovers but also my least favorite one unrequited love, Amy has loved her best friend Quinn since she was fourteen, But then Lisa moved to town and became a part of their trio and it was Lisa, Quinn dated and subsequently married, Amy kept quiet throughout, sad as well as happy for her friends, She learnt to hide her feelings around Quinn, She dated and even moved on but that love never really went away, So, for the pastmonths she cut of that contact with her friends to be happier, She threw herself in fulfilling her dream of owning and restoring the Grand theater, Things go south and she calls Lisa for help and instead ends up talking to Quinnthey are lawyers, Quinn we find out is going through a divorce, Lisa cheated on him foryears, Things went south for them because of Lisa's ambition in life, Quinn has not told Amy about the divorce so when he comes to town suddenly at the Council meeting Amy is surprised and asks him about Lisa, Quinn comes through for Amy and she gets the Grand and seeing the amount of work it needs he volunteers to spend his vacation helping her, Amy is initially not in favor of this as in the past few months her defenses against Quinn have eroded because of not being in contact with him and when she finds out about Lisa, she feels guilty as well as hope.
Quinn wants to get back his friendship with Amy, The question here which comes is about friendship, when things happens between them there is this question in Quinn's mind, does he want to loose his friendship with AmyWe also find out that things between Quinn and Amy were not onesided during their teens but Quinn chose to keep Amy's friendship rather than gamble it on a relationship.
I loved the way Quinn got Amy, he knew when she was lying, I loved how Amy shouted on Quinn and took care of him, The drunken confession of Amy's feelings made me cringe and happy in equal measures, The book was so well done, I will read more of her Superromances now,

Rating..