Friends Like These [Paperback]

Victoria Routledge's exhilarating first novel, Friends Like These, is a warm and witty story about a group of Cambridge graduates. The friends, who had been inseparable at college since their Fresher's Week meeting, arrange a weekend reunion in the Lake District. The weekend has several objectives: to celebrate the engagement and plan a wedding for Mike and Laura as well as to renew bonds with their closest friends. The weekend moves from the domesticity of Laura and Rachel trying to "out-cake" each other to the unexpected arrival of jet- setting actress, Caroline, whose sole objective seems to be to turn heads. Their friendships are indeed renewed but not until Caroline's atrocious behaviour is exposed and the many years of bottled-up anger is vented with scintillating effect. Friends Like These is fresh and funny with tight, sparkling dialogue and quick-witted insight into the friendships of seven twenty- something graduates with very different life goals. --Pat Naylor

Out of university and doing one of those "Look, no hands!" jobs in a PR firm, Rachel is persuaded to join some old friends on a celebratory weekend in the Lake District - with mixed feelings. She remembers the good old days - the fun, the laughs, the gossip - but also remembers the bad bits.

Victoria Routledge was born and educated in the Lake District and now lives in North London. She read English at Trinity College, Cambridge, where she achieved the giddy heights of the position of reserve for the first University Challenge team. Aged twenty-four she now works as a fiction editor in a leading publishing house. SORTED FOR TEAS AND FIZZ is her first novel.