Falling Together by Marisa de los Santos

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What if saying hello to an old friend meant saying good-bye to life as you know it?

It’s been six years since Pen Calloway watched her best friends walk out of her life. And through the birth of her daughter, the death of her father, and the vicissitudes of single motherhood, she has never stopped missing them.

Pen, Cat, and Will met on their first day of college and formed what seemed like a magical and lifelong bond, only to see their friendship break apart amid the realities of adulthood. When, after years of silence, Cat—the bewitching, charismatic center of their group—e-mails Pen and Will with an urgent request to meet at their college reunion, they can’t refuse. But instead of a happy reconciliation, what awaits is a collision of past and present that sends Pen and Will, with Pen’s five-year-old daughter and Cat’s hostile husband in tow, on a journey across the world.

Falling Together by Marisa de los Santos has the kind of characters who either make you wish you were close friends with in real life or feel so familiar because they remind you of your bestest, closest friends – you know; the ones who you go way back with, the ones who knew you when you were a crazy mess and still loved you, the ones who no matter how long it's been between get togethers, you still pick up the conversation as if no time had passed at all.

Cat, Pen, and Will remind me of me and my best friend - so intimately connected that they seemed joined at the hip. I loved the way they talked to each other, witty, zany, and sweet as only people who know one another inside and out can talk.

De los Santos's celebration of this incredibly close friendship between the three and their other relationships is laugh-out-loud humorous, insightful, and stirringly poignant. As the novel alternates from their youthful past as an inseparable trio to the present, when Cat, Will, and Pen have not spoken for years because of a mysterious falling out, the story's sentimental nature is balanced by the reality of friends who for whatever reason inevitably grow up and apart.

"'You want to know the truth?'" Pen said. 'The truth is that, all these years, I have missed both of you more than I can describe. I have pined for you. I wanted you back the whole time.'

"Pen felt lighter after she'd said it. She had not planned to say it. In fact, she had planned not to because what in the world would be the point? To make herself vulnerable as a newborn chick? To make Will uncomfortable? To put him on the spot? And still: this lightness. Something about the night, about having listened to all that Jason had said and to be sitting in this precise spot under this precise sky thinking about Cat with Will made saying what she harbored in her heart feel natural. She didn't expect him to say it back or to even acknowledge it. She just wanted him to know."

I loved Falling Together not only because of the endearing characters but also because of de los Santos's depiction of the Philippines. In the last quarter of the novel, Pen, Will, Cat's husband, and Pen's daughter travel to the Philippines to search for the elusive Cat. Having read another novel earlier in the year which painted a very ugly picture of my home country, I approached this part of the novel with trepidation. I need not have worried; Falling Together, without glossing over the realities of a poor Third World country, does a wonderful and accurate job of celebrating what I hold dear: the strong, multi-generational family ties, the hospitality and warmth of the people, the natural wonders, and the FOOD! FYI, I have a litmus test for novels which so far have never been proven wrong; any book which has food descriptions that make my mouth water and my full stomach growl in hunger is one worth reading.

Thank you very much to the Amazon Vine program for providing a copy for me to review!