You Have to Make Your Own Fun Around Here, by Frances Macken

Childhood friends Katie, Evelyn and Maeve have been thrown together by circumstance rather than affinity. Their friendship holds through to adulthood because of habit and the dominance of Evelyn’s strong personality. Evelyn is a pampered princess for whom everything comes easily. Maeve is her poor cousin with few choices. Narrator Katie is a people pleaser, who adores Evelyn and endures Maeve. The dynamic of their friendship is disturbed when a new girl arrives in their rural Irish town and leaves in mysterious circumstances. But it takes many years and much drama for their roles to change and for Katie and Maeve to find their own voices. The girls’ story is told in a series of time jumps through primary school, high school, college and beyond. It provides a vivid picture of small town life in Ireland, with echoes of Derry Girls in its quirky characters with a dark side. It’s a little difficult to accept that Katie stays in Evelyn’s thrall even when she moves to Dublin for University. Would it really have been so clicky that she couldn’t make any new friends? After a tale stretching more than a decade it all comes together a little too quickly and neatly in the end, particularly for Maeve, whose voice has until then barely been heard.