The Family Friend by C.C. MacDonald.

Erin comes home to her fiancee Raf and meets a stranger, Amanda, who he claims to be an old family friend. Follow Erin as she copes with this new visitor.

I enjoyed reading The Family Friend which is a psychological drama highlighting problems around relationships and social media. It is very current in it’s outlook and I liked how it explored people’s engagement with social media. Erin is an Instamum and has become an influencer on Instagram. She is successful on Instagram and has lots of #gifted items for her and her baby Bobby. I liked how the business model of Instagram was explored in this novel and how it affected Erin and her followers. A nice discussion was made about how people can so easily  become addicted to Smartphones and social media. I enjoyed reading about the psychology behind the creation and following of Instagram stories.

I liked how this story developed and how suspicions of Amanda and Raf grew. Okay the plot was not brilliant but the character development was wonderful. The Family Friend is a character driven novel and the reader very quickly develops an empathy for Erin with her screaming baby Bobby.

I loved how many social issues were featured in this novel. Although the author is a man, he puts the world along the Kent coast purely from a young mother’s perspective. I found it very easy to enter and engage with Erin’s world as she struggled with her screaming baby, mother and toddler groups, strolling along the coastline and managing an Instagram account with negative comments and trolls.

I think The Family Friend would make for a typical British television drama which are popular at the 21:00 broadcast slot. Reading this novel was engaging and had a nice steady flow. I consider The Family Friend to be a GOOD 4 star read and would be happy to read another book from C.C. MacDonald.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher Random House UK/Vintage for giving me a #gifted copy on the understanding that I publish a review.

The Family Friend was written in 2021 and is available as an Amazon Kindle eBook.