**Spoilers at the end**
Overall Rating: ★★★★★
If you want a book that will rip your heart out and then put it back together, just to go through the same cycle again, this book is for you. Kristin Hannah’s Firefly Lane tells the story of Kate Mularkey and Tully (Tallulah) Hart. They meet as young women in 8th grade in 1974. Tully is the cool, popular one who everyone wants to be around. Kate is the studious one who doesn’t have friends at the time she meets Tully. Against the odds, they become fast friends. They make a pact to be best friends forever. Over the next three decades, there are events that pull them apart (sometimes geographically, sometimes personally), but they always make their way back to each other, never forgetting the pact they made to each other. While Tully’s ambitions take her to reporter fame, Kate chooses a different route. Despite their differences, they’ve managed to keep their friendship alive for 30 years…until a breaking point occurs that may end it.
**Spoilers Ahead**
I have never cried so hard at the end of a book. Unfortunately, the ending was ruin for me because I saw the synopsis of the next book, but I still wasn’t expecting Kate passing away and the funeral to hit me as hard as it did. I was not ready to have my heart shattered. But it was shattered in the best way possible. I think Kate dying and Tully’s reaction to losing the only consistent person in her life was a great way to end the book to lead into the sequel. The damage that Kate’s death did to Tully is way worse than it seems based on how she acted at the funeral. I was left wanting more and I was so excited to read the sequel, which also did not disappoint (review of Fly Away coming soon!!).