Dear Friends, Lisa Greenwald (Book Review)

Summary: Dear Friends

What if you realized that you can’t seem to maintain friendships? When this happens to Eleni in Dear Friends, she decides to embark on a challenge to revisit and revive her top five failed friendships. As life would have it, just as the process starts, her oldest childhood friend and BFF, Sylvie, starts pulling away from her. Can Eleni get to the bottom of things and recover her friendships before the start of middle school?

The Good

This had an intriguing premise, and that kept me trying even though the book had a slow start. Eleni’s voice is also well developed, and it’s easy to root for her as she figures out how to be a good friend. I’ve heard great things about Lisa Greenwald and her ability to capture tween girls and their motivations, and she did a great job with this one.

Eleni goes to Hebrew school, and one of her lost friendships is with her Hebrew school friend. I like stories that include religion as part of kids’ lives because some kids are religious, and it’s good representation. I loved Adelaide and Eleni’s friendship. Even though Adelaide is tasked with befriending Eleni to help her feel less friendless, she’s pretty instrumental in helping her complete her friendship recovery mission.

There’s lots of friendship drama as Eleni keeps trying to regain her friendship with Sylvie and win back her other friends too. Finally, Eleni’s mom seems to have clinical anxiety and we see how that — undiagnosed and untreated — impacts Eleni.

Overall: Dear Friends

Dear Friends is a highly relatable, summery middle grade book about what it means to be a good friend and maintain strong friendships. Featuring a likable, enthusiastic protagonist who’s experienced several friendship disappointments (most of her own making), this story manages to be fun and poignant and with an epistolary touch as Eleni records her progress in a diary.