Have you ever read a book and fallen in love with a friendship? It’s magical when an author can create a relationship that the reader can adore and even envy. Below are my favorite books with the BEST best friends!
When I mentioned magic earlier, no author does it quite like Amor Towles in A Gentleman in Moscow. I don’t know about you, but I have a relatively short attention span. My favorite books tend to be ones with a lot going on – action, adventure, romance. So how was it that I fell in love with a book with one main character in one main setting? It was the friendship! The story follows County Alexander Rostov who is sentenced by a Bolshevik tribunal to house arrest in the Metropol, a hotel near the Kremlin. The author is able to form really rich relationships between Rostov and the hotel guests while weaving in a satisfying story.
Remember when I raved about the Red Rising series in a previous blog post? Well let me continue to tell you how much I love these books. I LOVE THESE BOOKS. One of the best aspects of the novels are the friendships. My favorite relationship in this series is not the love interest between Darrow and Virginia (aka Mustang) but between Darrow and Sevro. Sevro becomes Darrow’s best friend, greatest ally, and right hand. The loyalty and true love they share is beautiful. Add in the howlers and Darrow finds a family he is willing to die for.
How much do I love thee? Let me count the ways. Well that would take too long but believe me when I say Throne of Glass is one of my favorite fantasy series out there. It begins with a young adult tone but it becomes so much more! Sarah J. Maas really grows the characters and as they grow the story really gets good. But let me talk about the characters for a second. Celaena Sardothien, our main protagonist, starts out alone but by the end of the series is surrounded by friends and family. And it’s that family that makes the story worthwhile. Each book includes chapters with different perspectives of the characters which make the relationships that much deeper. We know how much they love, care, and respect each other. We know how dark the days are for these characters and how the relationships with each other make it possible for them to keep fighting.
I’m not super partial to books where each chapter is focused on a different character. My main schtick is one or two main characters with a story revolving around them. In books with different perspectives, I tend to rush through certain chapters focusing on certain characters because I’m dying to know what happened to them. And now that I’ve built that idea up, let me tear it down because I loved Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo and it does exactly what I just described. Similarly to Throne of Glass, the shift in character perspectives only adds to the reader’s experience and helps develop the friendships between these six main characters. I loved seeing how characters conflicted, how hate when to love and loyalty, and how friends stood by each other no matter the sacrifice.
Definitely the most tragic book on this list but worth mentioning. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini follows two women who become entangled in each other’s lives. The relationship starts off adversarial but becomes something that each woman would die to protect. An intense story, Hosseini captures the hardships of living in Afghanistan as a woman and mother while creating an incredible friendship that helps the main characters find some measure of peace.
Alyssa Flores
Alyssa reads hundreds of books a year and is on a never-ending quest to find the perfect book.
