“Firefly Lane” by Kristin Hannah
Published: February 5, 2008 by St. Martin’s Press
Genres: Novel, Historical Fiction, Saga
I finished “Firefly Lane” by Kristin Hannah, but I needed time to recover from my heartbreak before writing this review. Let me start by saying that I watched the show first, after talking with friends, that may have been the right way to do it.
So let me start by talking about the show. I really enjoyed it. I loved how they jumped back and forth from present to past. The story of best friends was fantastic. Both characters were fun and flawed and no matter what they stood by each other. Sarah Chalke as Kate and Katherine Heigl as Tully were a believable, lovable pair of best friends. Their chemistry was fantastic. But here’s the thing, after reading the book I’m disappointed in the story-line of the show.
The book was so much better and the story was so much more exciting. I don’t understand why they changed it so drastically. In the book Kate and Johnny aren’t getting a divorce, they have three kids instead of one, and there are some other major story-lines that come from Kate and Johnny being married. Tully’s character is pretty similiar to her character on the show, but the story-line with her mother is very different and Tully’s relationship with Kate’s daughter, Mara, is a much bigger part of the book. After reading the book I felt like Mara really got the shaft in the show.
The show doesn’t jump back and forth in time. It started in the 70s and worked it’s way up to the present. It was a very smooth ride. There are plenty of references to the past, but you never actually go there with the narrator. The early years were pretty similar to what we saw on the show, but it was the later years that were dramatically different. I spoke to a few friends after reading it who read it first then watched the Netflix show and they were super disappointed in the show.
The reason I said I needed to recover from my heartbreak is because I identified with Tully in the book, not the show. Tully was very focused on her career. While she was busy working her best friend was starting her family and when they found themselves in different stages of life they began to feel distance between them. The same thing happened to me and my best friend. She had her first child 5 years before I had mine. I wasn’t ready for that life yet and her life completely changed. Just like me and my best friend, Kate and Tully remained best friends, but their relationship changed.
Tully struggled to find a place for herself in Kate’s new world and because of that she found herself screwing things up for Kate. And that hurt their friendship too.
The part that really got me was SPOILER ALERT: when Kate got sick. My best friend got sick too and I remember the helpless feeling and wanting to keep things as normal for her as possible, while trying to be real with the fact that she was sick. This was the part that hit me super hard. I was bawling like a baby by the time I reached the end of the book I was ugly crying.
There is a second book that I will be reading soon. There is no word yet on whether there will be a second season coming to Netflix.
I highly recommend reading this book. If you had a best friend that knows all your secrets and drank Boone’s Farm with you in the woods you should read it together and discuss it and all your own memories over a glass of wine. My best friend would have loved this book and we would’ve done just that.
