First published 2020
Kate Mularkey sits at the bottom of eighth grade's social ladder in the summer of 1974. Then Tully Hart moves across the street. Beautiful and ambitious, Tully wants Kate as her friend. The girls seem completely different. Kate comes from a loving but embarrassing family and accepts she'll never be cool. Tully appears glamorous but hides a devastating secret about her absent mother. They promise to stay best friends forever and become inseparable as TullyandKate. Their friendship spans thirty years across the changing Pacific Northwest. Tully chases fame through men in the eighties, then television news in the nineties, traveling from New York around the world but finding loneliness. Kate wants an ordinary life with marriage and children, but motherhood changes her in unexpected ways. She loses herself and envies Tully's success. The friends support each other through jealousy, anger, and resentment until one betrayal destroys everything they built together.
Genres: literary-fiction, friendship, contemporary, family-drama
Vibes: emotional-atmospheric, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, found-family
Setting: Pacific Northwest
Period: 1970s, 1980s, 1990s
513 pages · Paperback · St. Martin's Griffin
Content warnings: depression, mental-illness