With the class reunion looming, she cannot avoid uncomfortable questions and tries to find out what has really happened to Maria. I’m not saying it’s anything super special, it’s reasonably simple and there aren’t a lot of beautiful descriptions of things, but it’s easy to read and definitely keeps you reading. becomes more and more paranoid, afraid of a person who's standing behind Maria's profile and secrets that could come out. Yes, she feels tremendous guilt, yes, she obviously did something terrible, but my word does she fixate on this, to the extent that she lies to the police REPEATEDLY, even though she believes she and her son are in potentially life-threatening danger. Maybe that had been the problem all along; Maria Weston had wanted to be friends with me, but I let her down.

She is still emotionally hankering after her ex-husband who left her for a younger woman when she got pregnant. With her mesmerizing debut, Laura Marshall offers a timely and essential story of how who we were shapes who we become, the hidden cost of our increasingly connected world, and the dangerous shape that revenge can take in our modern era. While her own self-hatred perfectly explains why she is so alone, there are some hints that her ex husband, the only other person who knows her terrible secret, has been fanning the flames of her self-immolation by suggesting that no one else could ever accept what she did.The only certainty is that Maria Weston disappeared that night, never to be heard from again–until now. Louise accepts the friend request from Maria, because she has a guilty secret which goes back to the night when Maria has gone missing. They immediately transported me back to my insecure self where it felt like one popular girl/dictator held my social life (which felt like life and death back then) in her well manicured hands. I will try to get my hands on any book that has social media at the heart of it, and "Friend Request" fit the bill perfectly. I sit there amidst the trappings of my very comfortable, very middle-class, nearly middle-aged life.

Friend Request by Laura Marshall had raving reviews and endorsements from Jenny Colgan, Marian Keyes and Erin Kelly. Set in both 1989 and the present day, Louise sits somewhere between the bully and the bullied, as she desperately tries to fit in and be cool. Her entire adult life, Louise has known if the truth ever came out, she could stand to lose everything. We all found the social media aspect of this novel quite clever and it added a scary and spine tingly feeling for us as we read this story.To keep her secret, Louise must first uncover the whole truth, before what's known to Maria - or whoever's pretending to be her - is known to all. Goodreads Librarians are volunteers who help ensure the accuracy of information about books and authors in the Goodreads' catalog. Maybe that had been the problem all along: Maria Weston had wanted to be friends with me, but I let her down. You think you’re happy with a theory you’ve come up with and then all of a sudden something pops up with someone else and you get suspicious again.