Firefly Lane by Kristin Hannah

This is such a girl's book: enduring friendships, career struggles, tear-jerking diseases, love triangles -- Firefly Lane has them all! Depending on your taste in books -- this could either delight or annoy you. Or, in my case - both!

Tully Hart and Kate Mularkey meet in the 70's as teenagers. They are vastly different personalities with contrasting upbringings, but somehow they manage to forge a strong bond in spite of them. Their friendship continues through college, career, family, and the obligatory chick lit's tear-jerking health tragedy.

This book has another theme common in women's literature - regrets and choices. The "road not taken" is heavily pondered in this novel.

Tully becomes famous as she's always wanted, but except for Kate and Kate's family -- has no personal life. Kate abandons career in favor of family, but feels overwhelmed and wistful of what she's given up.

For the most part, I enjoyed the book. It's easy to relate to the characters -- they are my age so have listened to the same music, lived through the same US history and have been through some of the same struggles.

However, I felt the novel had some flaws. The character of Tully Hart was somewhat unrealistic. Very few people reach Oprah-status in life and it would have been more plausible to have Tully become a locally-famous news anchor instead of a media super star.

The book could have been shortened by about 100 pages. Somewhere around the new millenium -- the story got a bit tedious for me. And, get ready to sing "Wind beneath My Wings" at the story's conclusion.

Read this book if you want to lose yourself for awhile in a fairly decent story. However, my guess is you won't remember it too long after you've read the last page.