MWF Seeking BFF: My Yearlong Search For A New Best Friend

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MWF Seeking BFF: My Yearlong Search For A New Best Friend

by Rachel Bertsche (Goodreads Author)

3.45 of 5 stars 3.45 · rating details · 5,594 ratings · 1,086 reviews

When Rachel Bertsche first moves to Chicago, she’s thrilled to finally share a zip code with her boyfriend. But shortly after getting married, she realizes that her new life is missing one thing: friends. Sure, she has plenty of BFFs—in New York and San Francisco and Boston and Washington, D.C. Still, in her adopted hometown, there’s no one to call at the last minute for g...more

Paperback, 349 pages

Published December 20th 2011 by Ballantine Books

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Jan 22, 2012 Rach rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Everyone. Seriously.

Shelves: non-fiction, memoir, challenge-11-winter, 2012, favorites

It's official. Though I have a strange aversion to having friends with the same name as me, Rachel Bertsche could be my new BFF. Or one of them, that is. If we lived in the same town. And if she knew who I was. And it's not only because I found Rachel's thoughts on friendship to be thoughtful and relevant, but that while reading her words, it felt like we would "click," that if we were sitting and having a conversation, on a girl-date or something, we wouldn't be lost for things to talk about. W...more It's official. Though I have a strange aversion to having friends with the same name as me, Rachel Bertsche could be my new BFF. Or one of them, that is. If we lived in the same town. And if she knew who I was. And it's not only because I found Rachel's thoughts on friendship to be thoughtful and relevant, but that while reading her words, it felt like we would "click," that if we were sitting and having a conversation, on a girl-date or something, we wouldn't be lost for things to talk about. We seem to have quite a bit in common, not least of all our propensity to read EW cover to cover and our tv-watching obsessions. On the slightly-less-positive side, I also tend to experience frenvy every once in a while, and have a tendency to story interrupt. Trust me, I'm working on that stuff. But putting aside the girl-crush I now have on Rachel, her book really resonated with me. More than just a how-to for finding friends, it's really all about how to be a kind, generous person, how to be a good friend to everyone from current BFFs to new acquaintances, and how to become closer to the people around you, enhancing the happiness level of all around. I will gladly talk this book up to anyone, and have already made my mom buy it for the joint Kindle account she and my sisters and I share, because I feel it was that insightful to me.

I am far from a perfect friend. I like to think I am a good listener, but I am spectacularly bad at staying in touch with people and following up with how their lives are. It's not that I don't care: when I run into friends I haven't seen in a while I am genuinely pleased to see them, and when someone emails me about getting together, I am happy to meet them wherever they'd like. I just have a hard time being the one who reaches out, who suggests the girl-date. Maybe it's because I'm afraid they don't want to see me? I'm not too sure, but that's something I definitely want to improve on, and feel inspired to do after reading Rachel's book. I want to be the kind of friend I would love to have, someone who calls or texts just to say hi, someone who is persistent about making sure we see each other every so often. I want to make sure my friends know that I value them, and if I have to leave my house more often, and watch less tv, and be busier than I might like to do it, I will.

Like Rachel, I had a time in my life where I felt really alone and friendless. I had just graduated from my small liberal arts college in central Pennsylvania and moved back home to the Seattle area, where I had grown up and most of my family still lived. I still had a few old friends that lived in the area, but to be honest, I was never that great at staying in touch with people, and the 4 years I had spent on either another coast or in another country had isolated me from the people I used to spend time with. The people I had become close with during college were good friends, but most of them stayed on the east coast, with one lone friend, my closest, returning to her hometown of Denver.

Add to that the fact that I was painfully shy around strangers, and you have a girl that spent most of her time either holed up at home with her parents, reading and watching tv, or tagging along after her old sisters. I tried to get involved in activities, succeeded in making some friends through church, became closer with girls who had been merely acquaintances when I was in high school, but I never really felt like I belonged, like I was a unique person that other people would be interested in getting to know. I slowly opened up to those around me, but I still felt like I was living on the fringes of groups, instead of really belonging anywhere. Obviously, I had massive self-esteem issues, and I'm sure that's something I'll struggle with all of my life.

Then, suddenly, things changed. When I was about 26, I decided I was done feeling sorry for myself. If I didn't like my life, I was going to change it. I had always been interested in photography, but I finally got myself a nice DSLR. I joined a photo sharing community called Flickr, and started a daily self-portrait project called 365. About 4 months into my project, when I had made quite a few friends through the 365 group, I decided it wasn't enough to have online friends commenting on my photos, I needed to make some friends that I could hang out with in real life. I found a photography meet-up group that was based in Seattle and, after stalking the group's site for a few weeks, finally started going to a few events. Don't get me wrong: it's not like I was suddenly a confident, self-assured person. I was still nervous, and awkward, and barely made it through my first few meet-ups. I went to a small photostroll in May of 2007, leaving right after. The next month, I went to a hang-out-and-chat event, where I met a lot of people, many of whom seemed to be good friends already, but were all open and friendly to newcomers. What helped me along the most, though, was that I had something in common with these people: we all loved to take pictures. At different group events, I would gravitate to the people with whom I had the best connection, getting to know them better and becoming more comfortable around them, until one day, we were just hanging out, no official group meeting necessary. There are some people with whom I have a very specific Friendaversary: we met on a specific day, and were instantly friends, right off the bat. But for most of the people I met through flickr, and the secondary friends I met through the first initial group, the day we actually became friends is kind of unclear, because it evolved so fluidly. By September of 2007, I definitely had new friends, even if they weren't at the call-anytime stage quite yet. I'd been to their houses, laughed uproariously with them, and shared in-jokes. I felt like I belonged. Much has changed in the 5 years since I had my friendship epiphany. I still love taking photos, though I don't take nearly as many as I did back then. I haven't been to a meet-up outing in several years, but I still maintain a few dozen friendships of varying degrees with people I initially met back them. Some of them have become my closest friends, the ones I know will support me no matter what.

This book has not only inspired me to be a better friend, and to generally friendlier to people around me, but has also changed the way I think about friendships in general. I always thought, "I should have one friend who is closer to me than anyone else, who can be The Person whenever I need someone for anything." And I never really had that ONE person, which made me feel incomplete somehow, that maybe I was this strange person that no one would ever want as their Best Friend. But what Rachel comes to realize, and what she made me realize as well, as there is never just one person who can be the be-all-end-all for you. It takes all kinds of friends to make a happy, full life, and you can have multiple "best friends" who fill different roles in your life. I can't tell you now how this is going to change my life, because I'm not a psychic. What I can tell you is this: I plan on treasuring the friends I have, building our friendships with laughter and love.

PS, I might have to track Rachel down. I'm not a stalker, don't worry. Or, at least I'm a harmless one, right? I have people to vouch for me. :)(less)

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Jul 16, 2012 Skyla rated it 2 of 5 stars

Recommended to Skyla by: Zabet The Dark Empress of Dark Chocolate

Shelves: self-help

I had heard about this book when it was first released, it made a bit of a splash in the local newspaper and my Mum mentioned it to me after a young work colleague of hers read it. And then my sister mentioned it and so did Zabet here on GR.

It took me a little while but I finally found a copy at the library and read it.

As a child I had many friends and over the years since moving to Canada and just growing up I have lost touch with the majority of them. Since moving to Canada I haven’t had frien...more I had heard about this book when it was first released, it made a bit of a splash in the local newspaper and my Mum mentioned it to me after a young work colleague of hers read it. And then my sister mentioned it and so did Zabet here on GR.

It took me a little while but I finally found a copy at the library and read it.

As a child I had many friends and over the years since moving to Canada and just growing up I have lost touch with the majority of them. Since moving to Canada I haven’t had friends, in real life, who I truly believe were friends with me because they actually enjoyed my company but rather because I was a novelty. I have had the same issue with relationships too. For the most part Canadians seem to view me as a the novelty English girl something interesting to tell their real friends about and because of this I think I fear making friends with those who were born and raised here in real life. I have plenty of online friends who live/were born in Canada but in real life not so much. The reason something like 95% of my relationships never worked out is because I dated people who were here on student visas or work visas who after a certain period of time went back home and we lost touch.

That and the fact that over the last few years I have developed a pretty severe anxiety disorder to the point that social interactions have a tendency to make me sick to the stomach and I end up avoiding interacting with too many people.

I finally decided to read this book to see if there were any tips I maybe could pick up about how to interact with people or how to put myself out there more.

As much as I enjoyed reading about Rachel’s girl dates and her quest to find a new BFF…I’d like to point out that she already had a pretty active social life in Chicago. She went out with people from work, she’d joined a book club, she had a husband and his friends, she was still in contact with her BFF’s from back home and they weren’t actually all that far away. I was expecting her to be a little more alone in regards to friends from the title of the book. I understand that she was looking for a specific type of friend but it just felt like she was saying that the work friends and yoga friends or whatever else just didn’t matter at all.

The book was cute, some of her stories were funny but I felt a little put off by it at the same time. She had friends she just didn’t see them as any truly important.
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Jan 14, 2012 Krystal rated it 5 of 5 stars

What do you do when you are friendless in an unfamiliar big city? You put out an ad for friends, of course! The author moved to the Windy City after marrying her college sweetheart, from that statement alone everything sounds hunky-dory...however, she had to leave behind her two best friends.

Rachel's story is hysterical. This book will easily make the reader laugh, experience several awkward moments with Rachel, and hold his/her breath to see if the friendship will work out. The way the author w...more

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Jan 26, 2012 Jill rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Generally, I'm not a fan of, what I call, the "faux-moir"--fake memoirs where the author embarks on some sort of adventure or scheme to satisfy the book deal they already have. They combine their experiences with research to lighten up what would otherwise just be classified as non-fiction, or a straight-up memoir. So, especially since I'm in a book club with the author, I'm relieved that I did like the book . . . a lot. I wouldn't have picked it up if my book club weren't reading it, but now th...more

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Jul 12, 2012 Amy rated it 3 of 5 stars

I strongly suspect the author was looking for a hook for a book idea more than she was desperately seeking a BFF. Strongly.
In her new (old: college town) city of Chicago she had not only her husband, mother, and extended family including cousins she was social with, but four work friends she ate lunch with "every day" and friends through her husband that they went out with every few weeks. Whaaaat? Thats not the lonely life, my friend. You may *want* more friends, but you are busy on a regular b...more

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Oct 17, 2012 Keilani Ludlow rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Loved loved this book. Think The Happiness Project but of course different. Maybe I loved it because I relate in some ways. The author moves to another city, gets married to her longtime boyfriend, and two years later realizes she still doesn't have any really good friends like those she left behind. She makes a determination that she will have to make finding new really-close-can-call-about-anything-super-good-friends an organized project. Like in The Happiness Project (when people think it's s...more

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Jan 03, 2012 Nina rated it 5 of 5 stars

I loved this memoir about trying to make friends in a new city. Not easy to do without college dorms or childhood memories keeping relationships connected. I thought 52 "friend dates" might be too many to read about, but I was wrong. I sailed through this book in a few days and really enjoyed the mix of research about friendships and connections along with the author's real-life experience of setting out to meet new people.

Highly recommend.

My FULL rave is on my blog: http://ninabadzin.com/2012 ...more

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Sep 13, 2012 Holly London rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites

This was one of the best books I've read in a long time! It grabbed my attention from the very beginning and just kept getting better and better. It was funny and light while at the same time it was meaningful and I walked away feeling as if I took something important away.

The way in which Rachel Bersche manages to combine humor with such interesting studies and factual information kept me so interested. I learned alot about friendship from her and have decided to put more effort into my own fr...more

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Sep 08, 2012 Olga rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-in-2012

The curse of the introvert is that while I enjoy spending time with people I know getting there (aka making friends) is a challenge. I frequently wonder how some people go from barely acquaintances to friends in no time and apparently with no awkwardness and lately I've been thinking about the general subject of friendship more than usual. So when a friend gushed about this book I jumped at the chance to read it - here's someone asking the same questions and apparently she has answers too!
Rachel...more The curse of the introvert is that while I enjoy spending time with people I know getting there (aka making friends) is a challenge. I frequently wonder how some people go from barely acquaintances to friends in no time and apparently with no awkwardness and lately I've been thinking about the general subject of friendship more than usual. So when a friend gushed about this book I jumped at the chance to read it - here's someone asking the same questions and apparently she has answers too!
Rachel's memoir is not just a collection of amusing anecdotes about her 52 new girl-dates in search of friends. She's also done some research on the subject of friendship and the narrative is liberally sprinkled with references to books and articles on the subject as well as summaries of her interviews with experts. This did give the book more of a dry air of an almost scientific article than I would have preferred but at least we know without a doubt that the author has thoroughly done her homework! She is also letting us into her life outside the friend-search, giving us a glimpse of how hew new husband was dealing with the whole thing (from what I can tell Rachel better hang on to her Matt, he’s a keeper), her existing friends‘ and family‘s support and her own analysis of herself and her quest throughout the year. It’s interesting to see the transformation of her wish list for the perfect friend from tentative to defined and grounded in the present and her transformation from a young woman seeking companionship to a young woman who can offer much not only to a potential friend but also to herself.
I really enjoyed reading about Rachel’s insights into what it takes to build a friendship, her take on our culture where admitting that you are looking for friends is tantamount to admitting that you are a weirdo looser, and her thoughts about one’s spouse being one’s best friend (or not). I can relate to her nervousness starting out on this adventure and applaud her for not leaving a stone unturned, and for turning into a yes-woman of friend-making in the name of having a social life, which is obviously very important to her.
While I wouldn’t want to repeat Rachel’s experiment (‘exhausting’ doesn’t even begin to cover my impression of the commitment she made over the course of that year) many of the lessons she learned I would like to apply to my own life.

Read more of my reviews at Bibliophile's Corner (less)

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Jan 02, 2013 Jaclyn Day rated it 4 of 5 stars

Friendship is hard to define, yet all of us can point to multiple instances where we either instantly clicked—or didn’t—with someone. The fact that friendship relationships are so similar to romantic ones in their development and their maintenance is what makes the premise of MWF Seeking BFF so compelling. When I went to my sister and mother’s Master’s graduation this weekend, I sat watching all of the groups of graduate friends huddled together taking photos and celebrating and remembered back...more Friendship is hard to define, yet all of us can point to multiple instances where we either instantly clicked—or didn’t—with someone. The fact that friendship relationships are so similar to romantic ones in their development and their maintenance is what makes the premise of MWF Seeking BFF so compelling. When I went to my sister and mother’s Master’s graduation this weekend, I sat watching all of the groups of graduate friends huddled together taking photos and celebrating and remembered back to my own high school and college graduations. At that moment in time, you think you will be friends with certain people forever. You’ll never lose touch. You’ll text, you’ll email, you’ll meet up! And then the emails are fewer, the texting stops and an occasional note on Facebook is about as far as your interaction extends.

Bertsche, newly living Chicago, laments that her friends live in every city in the country…except the one she’s in. She has work friends and acquaintances, but no one to call at the last minute to go shopping or see a movie with (the ultimate litmus test, according to her and I agree). She embarks on a yearlong quest to go on as many “friend dates” as possible to find a new BFF.

I found that the book’s subject matter spoke to me on a very real personal level, but I had a few problems with it nonetheless. First, Bertsche writes about a lot of studies done on friendships throughout the book. This isn’t so bad, but their placement feels awkward. It starts to feel a bit academic when she pulls one of these numbers: “I didn’t feel sparks for X right away. According to X study, this isn’t so uncommon. X percentage of people don’t blah blah blah.” You get the idea. It’s not the inclusion of the research itself that I have a problem with, but the way she incorporated it into her book. It interrupts the flow of the story and starts to feel formulaic.

The other problem I had with the book is that Bertsche does not always come off super likable. She can be endearing, funny and honest, but other times, I found myself thinking that I probably wouldn’t want to be her BFF either. I can’t put my finger on exactly what it was about certain portions of the book that turned me off, but there was something there.

But, I don’t want to discourage you. This book put a lot of my exact thoughts and feelings about post-college friendships into words. I’ve never been one with a lot of friends—usually a handful of super close ones—but I find myself more isolated than ever. My best friend since the fourth grade lives in Dubai! It doesn’t get more geographically challenged than that. And, while I do have friends in the area, it’s hard to find time around life and work to make the effort to get together. In my experience, the hardest thing about post-college friendships is that they require maintenance and up-keep the same way a romantic relationship does. In college, it’s so easy to maintain your friendships—you see the same people all the time. You live with them, eat with them, go to class with them. Once work and children and significant others and distance comes into play, friendships need a lot of commitment from both parties to work long-term.

Another frustrating point for me is the dynamic of the online friendship. I’ve felt as close to or closer to some online friends than ones I’ve had in real life, and yet we’d never met. On one hand, these friendships are so rewarding, but leave you feeling even more isolated perhaps.

One passage in the book really caught my eye, because it explained what I feel is the ideal test of friendship:

My new BFF will be someone I’m totally myself with. No need to be “on.” No stress during lunch dates, wondering what to say next to keep the conversation flowing. The last-minute phone call is really just a manifestation of comfort, anyway. Does it feel natural to invite her to drinks in an hour? Am I at ease hanging at her house, watching TV in silence? Would I be okay crying to her if something went really wrong?

I feel so lucky to have a few ladies in my life who I absolutely feel like this about and hope to add a few more over the next few years!

On that note, want to be my friend?(less)

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Mar 17, 2012 Amanda rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: memoirs

I picked up this book because of the familiarity of the story. Relocated to a new town...left all my close friends on the other side of the country...miss them like hell.

Bertsche does a great job of taking a blog and elevating it to a book. She sprinkles research in with her ancedotes and reflects on her own abilities as a friend. I learned some new things (it takes bi-monthly dates for 3 months to reach "friend" level, the four levels of friendship, the idea of having "brain room" for 150 frien...more

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Dec 09, 2012 Heather rated it 5 of 5 stars

I thought this book was fantastic. Definitely speaks to the modern day conundrum of making friends in a very technological world. I appreciate the author's honesty and genuine approach to friend-making and friend-keeping. It definitely gave me a lot of food of thought and ways I can work on being a better friend and being more open to the situations that life present me with. I need to copy the entire bibliography because the subject is super fascinating.

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Apr 22, 2012 Megan rated it 4 of 5 stars

Our book club concurred that the transitions between personal anecdotes and research reports should have been written more smoothly. However, the author's search for close friends in her new home city was interesting, enthused, variety-riddled, and actually rather well-reasoned. She tries almost anything, and comes across some great ideas to make new friends. She also focuses, however, on trying to become a better friend for her childhood besties and new acquaintances alike. Overall, she deliver...more

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Apr 19, 2013 Kim rated it 3 of 5 stars

This is a memoir about a married woman who moves to Chicago and struggles to make friends so she goes on 52 first friend-dates in a year. Yes, this model of memoir is a little tired--cook every recipe from Julia Child's cookbook in a year, make yourself happier by doing something different every month for a year, travelling for a year (why a year? why not two years? or 6 months? It's always a year)...but... I found myself relating to many of her experiences...getting nervous for a first friend-d...more

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Jan 09, 2013 Beth Gordon rated it 4 of 5 stars

The premise of the book is very true. It's very difficult to find new girlfriends. Having kids makes it so much easier, but if you're a young married wife (like the author) and don't have too many friends at work (unlike the author), it can be a struggle to meet other females.

The author seems a fundamentally outgoing person. She relocated to Chicago a few years ago from NYC, she works with a good bunch of women, she has a few relatives and other people she went to school with nearby. She's a fo...more

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Dec 30, 2012 Aubrey rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: chick-lit, audiobooks

Is it wrong to say that I liked this book because it there's someone out there that's a little crazier than I am?

If you are a fan of blog reading or those "I set a goal and this is how I reached it" books, then you will like this one. After moving to a new city for her husband's job and finding it hard to make girlfriends, Rachel sets a goal of going on 52 girl dates in a year. Let the fun begin!

As a person who has great friends but feels the circle changing as a majority of my friends pair off...more

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Dec 05, 2012 Mari rated it 3 of 5 stars

I checked out this memoir digitally, which I think is the best invention ever (or not, but I really like being able to do that ... I'm not one to crave zillions of digital files of books I'll never read again, can't sell or give away and never remember to try to loan out to someone who has the same device as me, etc.).

Anyway, the book itself is about the author's year-long quest to make friends in Chicago because all her friends live elsewhere.

There's a fair bit of friendship/relationship resea...more

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Nov 01, 2012 Mitch rated it 4 of 5 stars

Easily, one word that sums up this book is: FUN! This is totally a "glass of wine in the bathtub" book. "MWF Seeking BFF" by Rachel Bertshe is a blast, and will have you thinking about all the friends you already have and hopes for the friends of the future that you haven't even met yet!

Rachel is semi-new to Chicago and although she has a strong arsenal of friends throughout the country, she is eager to find a best friend locally. Someone she can randomly call up to vent to, laugh with, or meet...more

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Oct 31, 2012 Heather rated it 3 of 5 stars

I would say 3.5 stars on this book (is Goodreads EVER going to add half stars???). My sister recommended this book to me as she knows I've moved multiple times and have often faced the quest for new friends. I have to say I really related to some of the things in this book, even though the author is younger than me and in a different phase of life, thus changing the dynamics of her friend circles compared to mine. I found the research studies she wove into the story to be interesting. It's not a...more

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Oct 29, 2012 Sharon rated it 4 of 5 stars

Non-fiction. Author's personable, detailed description of finding friends after moving with her husband's job. I enjoyed her level of self-disclosure, more towards the middle and end of the book, than the beginning. She demonstrates personal growth that came with her quest to go on a girl-date each week in a calendar year. Studies re friendship are cited. I like to think that she used "MWF" to counterbalance the catchphrase "BFF". "M", married, is central to theme--her goal was female, straight...more

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Oct 24, 2012 Sara rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: emerging-adulthood, nonfiction, memoir, sociology

There have been some articles published recently about the difficulty that some young adults have in making lasting friendships post-college. Books like the seminal "Bowling Alone" and the recent "Going Solo" have been written about the increased isolation of Americans due to lack of community involvement, screen time, online social interaction in place of face-to-face communication, and so on. In this memoir, newly married Rachel, recently moved to Chicago and missing her NYC friends, decides t...more

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Sep 28, 2012 Heidi rated it 3 of 5 stars

This is one of those blogs-to-books that are all the rage now. Rachel has newly moved to Chicago, leaving her lifelong BFFs behind in New York. And also newly married, she's discovering that she her husband doesn't fulfill all her companionship and gossip needs--she's desperate for a female friend to chat with. So she pledges to go on 52 girl-dates in a year in a quest to find a new best friend.

This book resonated with me. I make friends easily and I'm not nearly as neurotic as Rachel is, but I...more

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Sep 11, 2012 Kerry rated it 3 of 5 stars

I heard about this book through my sorority magazine, Anchora, because the author is a Delta Gamma. It is a book about her year long search for a best friend forever. The author, Rachel, moved to Chicago from New York to live with her husband (boyfriend when she moved). After about a year of living in Chicago, Rachel felt like she still hadn't made her own friends - women who could match up to her best friends back in NY. Thus, her search to find a BFF. In the beginning of the book, she used the...more

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Aug 15, 2012 Kate rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: desperate-attempts-at-self-improvem, modern-girlie-pathos, oh-so-amusing

This was a rather odd book in the do-something-odd-in-a-year genre about a woman who attempts to go on 52 "friend dates" in a single year. This challenge is to find a BFF in a new city (Chicago). The author is a 20-something, recently married transplanted New Yorker who has lived in our fair city for a couple of years and still has no close friends. So, she decides to set out to find them, and in the course of the year she becomes much friendlier (more like a typical friendly Chicagoan, in fact!...more

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Aug 07, 2012 Jennifer rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-in-2012

I was initially drawn to this book because I've relocated a few times as an adult, and each time it took a pretty concerted effort to make new local friends. In my experience, it's definitely not impossible to make friends in a new city (or even country) but it does require a lot of active seeking, a bit of patience, and a certain amount of humility.

The book tended to be pretty repetitive, but at times it also resonated with me. For example, I also took an improv class -- like Rachel -- after m...more

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Jul 30, 2012 Sherah rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: culture

This book was recommended to me by a friend I left behind in Seattle when I recently moved to San Francisco. "Great!" I thought, "A book about a girl around my age girl-dating lots of people from the internet! I bet it's hilarious." I just signed up for GirlfriendSocial myself, completely out of my comfort zone; I've never even been on an internet date with a guy and I'm typically closest with men.

This was not a book about 52 internet girl-dates, though. It was a book about a nice, openminded, f...more This book was recommended to me by a friend I left behind in Seattle when I recently moved to San Francisco. "Great!" I thought, "A book about a girl around my age girl-dating lots of people from the internet! I bet it's hilarious." I just signed up for GirlfriendSocial myself, completely out of my comfort zone; I've never even been on an internet date with a guy and I'm typically closest with men.

This was not a book about 52 internet girl-dates, though. It was a book about a nice, openminded, friendly lady who feels all alone in her "new" (two years?) city of Chicago, even though her mom lives, I think she said, 6 blocks away? And she has cousins and her husband, college buddies, a work clique, and other various acquaintances around her? Hmm, at the beginning I'm starting to see that our status and social needs are quite different. For example, I don't have a close relationship with either of my parents, and I rarely (every 5-10 years?) see my brothers, much less my cousins, aunts, and uncles, who all live in the Bible Belt. As a major introvert, I need more alone time than socialization, and I have way less experience in friendships (especially with females) than I do with intimate boyfriendships. Her starting point actually seems like crazy levels of socialization to me.

The thought of going on one girlfriend date per week (not just from the internet; many of them come from acquaintances or are people she's already met) for a year sounds insanely active for myself, but I want to read about Rachel's experience. This book may not be the "ok enemies" of girl-dating that I'd hoped for, but I become hooked because I'm ready to hear all about how other people define and initiate girlfriendship. It's like a socio-cultural anthropology class! Which is also what I say when I watch Ru-Paul's Drag Race.

It's a long book. Well-written, if a bit on the oblivious-cliche side. I eventually find our common ground: we both like to bond over blogging, we are both humorous and require some degree of hilarity in our friends, and we both have identified anxiety around clicking with other women. Compatible friends are everywhere; I can, like most readers of this book probably, imagine getting along brilliantly with Rachel, even though our bad TV choices have little overlap. And improv? How ballsy. How awesome.

In the beginning of the book, I started to make mental notes about how unrealistic she was approaching her search for a BFF. There were many definitions and black-and-white thinking involved with her social approach; it felt stuffy and limiting. Mostly I just kept thinking that she hadn't fully grown up. Having camp buddies and school pals, those are the awesomest parts of being a kid, just like not having to pay bills or have periods. But you grow up, and then you have to get a job, you start to bleed, and women hate you if you're skinny, and they hate you if you're fat.

But Rachel is smart. She realizes very quickly that she needs to adjust her expectations a bit. She doesn't stop pursuing a best friend either, she just adjusts her definition of such. It's a part of being open-minded and receptive to life. She understands that, and she loosens up quite a bit by the end of the year. In the beginning, I felt like she wouldn't be friends with various people out of snobbery almost, but by the end she was having lunches with Texan waitresses and renting friends from a website.

There is much mention of research, much reference to other sources on friendship, loneliness, and the modern woman's social world. Rachel has done her homework. It's a pleasant read, and it makes you feel like you're not alone in your loneliness. That's valuable, and it's empowering. To know others have felt as awkward as she, and to hear of the responses she receives from her blogging around this topic, inspires you to do something about it instead of continuing to assume everyone else has it just fine and you are the weirdo. You are then empowered with examples of steps you can take to make your own BFFs: websites, services, strategies. I think this book works for the Good Side, and ultimately I'm glad I read it.(less)

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Jul 27, 2012 Alexis rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012

I'd give this 3.5 stars. Rachel actually talks about something that is of interest to women 25-40; the search for female friends. In this memoir, Rachel has been in Chicago for two years, but still doesn't have any close female friends. She moved to Chicago for love and is married, but still longs for female companionship.

So she tries a variety of things- she goes on 52 friend dates, goes to speed-friending and even tries - Rentafriend.com

Throughout the book, she discusses her experiment and so...more

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Jul 18, 2012 Taylor rated it 3 of 5 stars

Since I was just starting to succeed in the search for friends when I left Las Vegas a few months ago, I thought this would be entertaining and perhaps offer some insight into how to make new friends in Dallas, and it did, but I had a couple gripes. For one thing, I'm sure that Bertsche always planned on her experience becoming a book, and that changes the approach to the whole thing. Even if she loses in the friendship department, she has a book to write at the end of it. Also, one wonders how...more

1 like · like · see review

Jun 27, 2012 Kitty Frye rated it 2 of 5 stars

I think this might have made a good essay but when Rachel decided to go on 52 "friend dates" in an effort to find a new BFF, I don't think she needed to describe each one in detail. I gave up after the first dozen and felt like I probably wasn't missing anything life changing in the rest of the book. For one thing, I couldn't relate to her at all. She has every evening and weekend free to eat sushi and do yoga with potential BFFs. For me, I struggle to find an hour for myself and when I do I act...more

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Jun 23, 2012 Mary Pat rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: memoir

I hope Rachel doesn't take this personally, but this is a great book to read in the bathroom. It's not a "curl up on the couch and get lost in the story" book, but rather it can be read in short segments and you'll take something away from each of them. Rachel's experience made me think about how I approach friendship and I was able to relate to a lot of what she experienced.

I would really like a sequel written by her after she's had kids, she's no longer spending her evenings doing activities t...more

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About Rachel Bertsche

Rachel Bertsche is a journalist in Chicago, where she lives with her husband. Her work has appeared in Marie Claire, More, Teen Vogue, Every Day with Rachael Ray, Fitness, Women’s Health, New York, CNN.com, and more. Before leaving New York (and all her friends) for the Midwest, Bertsche was an editor at O, The Oprah Magazine.

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“But on a Sunday morning when I want to grab an omelet over girl talk, I’m at a loss. My Chicago friends are the let’s-get-dinner-on-the-books-a-month-in-advance type. We email, trading dates until we find an open calendar slot amidst our tight schedules of workout classes, volunteer obligations (no false pretenses here, the volunteers are my friends, not me, sadly), work events, concert tickets and other dinners scheduled with other girls. I’m looking for someone to invite to watch The Biggest Loser with me at the last minute or to text “pedicure in half an hour?” on a Saturday morning. To me, that’s what BFFs are.” — 10 people liked it

“Some of the friendships I've found as an adult are far more rewarding than those forged out of the convenience of adolescence.” — 8 people liked it

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