Group Chat
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Part Bridesmaids, part White Lotus, and part Mamma Mia, GROUP CHAT is a love letter to female friendship and a powerful reminder that life is short, and it goes real fast, so book the damn girls' trip.
When Farah's husband has an affair (she f*cking knew it), her group chat doesn't offer platitudes. They offer Mykonos. A free luxury villa, thanks to Vivian's DJ toy-boy. Clubs, beaches, boats, cocktails, and a week free from school lunches, perimenopausal insomnia and husbands waking them at 5am for run club.
But the five friends arrive with more than just new sunglasses and linen sets. There are sick parents, secret illnesses, sullen teenagers, and marriages that have lost their spark, and possibly their relevance. What follows is late nights and bad decisions, savage honesty, too many cigarettes, and the kind of laughter that only comes when you're with the women who know and love you best.
For Stella — married, stable and increasingly restless — the trip stirs something she can't ignore. Watching her friends, and remembering who she was on this island twenty years ago, begs the question: is choosing security the same as choosing happiness?
Sharp, funny and unflinchingly honest, this is a novel about female friendship at its most powerful, and what happens when the life you've built no longer feels like the one you want.
'A warm and witty reminder of why female friends are the true loves of a woman's life. Filled with that classic Zoë Foster Blake heart and humour, it's the book every woman will be talking about ... and sharing with her group chat!' Sally Hepworth, author of Mad Mabel
'I adored it. So vivid, fun, authentic and just bloody honest. It's heaven.' Clare Stephens, author of The Worst Thing I've Ever Done
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
It’s possibly the most relatable premise a modern Australian writer could come up with: The group chat that always talks about planning a trip together actually does it. In Zoë Foster Blake’s imagining, this means a holiday to Mykonos and a free luxury villa for five friends with 25 years of history, sparked by Farah’s discovery of her husband’s affair. So far so fun in the sun, right? The hook here is in the title—once you leave the curated confines of an app and you’re stuck with each other around the clock, it becomes a lot more difficult to keep up appearances. Especially when you’re all carrying too much emotional baggage for an overhead locker. For seemingly settled Stella, returning to the island she visited 20 years earlier also raises some uncomfortable questions about the life she’s built since. Foster Blake uses all that sunshine, bad behaviour and long-overdue honesty to explore what happens to friendships (and identities) as everyone hits middle age together.