Hope in a jar

Twenty years ago, Allie Denty was the pretty one and her best friend Olivia Pelham was the smart one. Through high school they were inseparable — until a vicious rumour about Olivia, one that cut too close to the truth, ended the friendship for good.

Now, on the eve of their twentieth high school reunion, both women are taking stock. Allie is working as a temp, suddenly single, a little heavier than she used to be and feeling old. Olivia, a cool and successful beauty editor at a New York magazine, has realised how lonely she is, and is finally ready to face her demons.

Beth Harbison's novel is a warm, funny book about female friendship and nostalgia, threaded with the beauty products and drugstore scents of an eighties adolescence — Love's Baby Soft, Watermelon Lip Smackers, bad run-ins with Sun-In.