Firefly Lane by Kristin Hannah

From Goodreads: In the turbulent summer of 1974, Kate Mularkey has accepted her place at the bottom of the eighth-grade social food chain. Then, to her amazement, the “coolest girl in the world” moves in across the street and wants to be her friend. Tully Hart seems to have it all—-beauty, brains, ambition. On the surface they are as opposite as two people can be: Kate, doomed to be forever uncool, with a loving family who mortifies her at every turn. Tully, steeped in glamour and mystery, but with a secret that is destroying her. They make a pact to be best friends forever; by summer’s end they’ve become TullyandKate. Inseparable. So begins Kristin Hannah’s magnificent new novel. Spanning more than three decades and playing out across the ever-changing face of the Pacific Northwest, Firefly Lane is the poignant, powerful story of two women and the friendship that becomes the bulkhead of their lives.

I liked this one a lot and then....I was glad it was over. It was like a very rich dessert, the first bite is heaven, the next few are wonderful, but if you go too far, it's gonna be bad. Hannah got it just right. The story goes on for a long time - three decades, 477 pages. I think if it had gone on just another moment longer I would have felt like I was reading an old Jackie Collins or Barbara Taylor Bradford! It doesn't feel like a long book because the story carries you along so rapidly, I just kept wanting to turn the page and find out what would happen next. The initial bliss comes from Hannah getting the feel of the times of the book just right. These girls are aligned to my age with just a few years to spare so the seventies felt just like I remember the seventies, same with the eighties and the nineties too. She chose song lyrics to open each decade that had the ability to transport you right back to where you were when you listened to that song. The main characters, TullyandKate, were likable enough but each also had some eye-roll inducing flaws; I didn't fall in love with either one. What made this book for me was the overall feeling of being transported back in time and the way the characters went through dilemmas that were real for their age and era. I'll be interested to hear how readers who are not close in age to these characters at these times felt about the book because I wonder how much of my pleasure came from it mirroring the time of my own life.