Family Friends

Since they first met at university twenty years ago, Maggie and Will have spent the last two weeks of every summer in France with their close friends, Lydia and Roland. Both families always look forward to this annual ritual – but this summer things are different.

Will has been hiding something from his wife, and is struggling to keep his deceit from seeping into the cracks in their marriage. Maggie is worried about their withdrawn teenage son. Roland is grappling with how to grieve the death of his first wife. Lydia is trying to ignore past chemistry with an old friend while learning to play second fiddle to a ghost.

Into this already conflicted fray steps Issy, Roland’s beguiling, irrepressible daughter from his first marriage. And as the August heat beats down, and the children behave in unexpected ways, the two couples find that tensions they have been trying their best to temper have begun to bubble over…

Family Friends is a deeply atmospheric, sophisticated and compelling novel about what happens when the ties of love and loyalty are stretched to the breaking point, how relationships change (and don’t change) over time, and how we navigate the challenges thrown at us in every season of life.

Author Biography

Chloë Ashby is an author and award-winning arts critic. She writes and reviews for publications including the Times, the Guardian, Harper’s Bazaar, and the TLS. As well as her two previous novels, she is the author of two non-fiction books on art history.