About the Book
Can you ever really hide a secret from your best friends?
Annie, Sondra, and Jo were the best of childhood friends—but they haven’t seen each other in far too long. To the outside world, their lives are perfect. But appearances can be deceiving…
Married to a pastor in a small town she’s never left, Annie’s devoted her life to family and the church. Most people consider her a saint—but they don’t know she’s hiding a big secret. Sondra’s living it up married to one of the richest men in L.A. and appears to have it all—beauty, brains, and a successful career. But when a real estate deal becomes more than just a transaction, she quickly realizes she’s in over her head. Jo is four years sober and struggling through a divorce. After a one-night stand takes an unexpectedly comic turn, she’s forced to reckon with a lifetime of bad choices.
When Annie’s secret catches up with her, Jo and Sondra rush to her side, escaping on a hilarious canoeing trip that turns into a soul-searching, death-defying adventure. Lost in the woods as one thing goes wrong after another, they find themselves sharing their deepest secrets around the campfire. But as each new revelation unfolds, one thing becomes clear: it will take more than a night of true confessions for the three of them to find their way back home.
My Review
I’m always looking forward to reading novels that focus around female friendships, so when I read the synopsis for Campfire Confessions I was all in. There were parts of the book I really connected to, the marital struggles, feeling the need to be superwoman in all facets of life, the uncertainty of divorce. I connected to the spiritual sections of the book and it was refreshing to see how Jo and Sondra were immediately ready to support their friend when Annie’s secret comes to light. Each woman has their own battle they are dealing with, but the three long-time friends come together and all attempt to help each other by deciding to go on a canoeing trip.
The trip offers more than sunshine and time on the water. The women begin to share their secrets, their uncertainties and their hopes for the future, but the trip is also far from idyllic. Canoes tip, they are lost in the woods and have a few particularly harrowing moments as they try to find their way back home and back on a path that makes each of them happy. The canoeing trip did get a little overboard at some moments – it seemed like anything and everything cliché was going to happen so it became easy to predict the next predicament they would need to sort through. I had a hard time really connecting with any of the three characters on more than a surface level. I liked all three of them and was rooting for them to be happy and succeed, but nothing more than that. While it was an interesting premise for a storyline and I enjoyed it, it wasn’t a favorite for me.
3.5 stars
