Best Friends Forever is a comprehensive and honest guide to the ups and downs of female friendships. It ignores nothing and acknowledges the significance that women give to friendships as well as the pain and confusion that results when friends break up or drift apart. This recognition of the complexity and importance of female friendship is refreshing, especially when women are used to a variety of books about romantic relationships and too few that address friendships head on. Novels, films, and television, however, are full of stories of female friendships, and Levine uses these to address women's expectations and idealizations of friendships, as well as to point to truths that are essential to any woman's understanding of friendship.

The book also uses material gathered from a survey of 1500 women who were eager to tell their own stories about successful, failed, or rekindled friendships. As a result, Levine is able to fill her book with stories and advice that all women can understand. I found myself recognizing aspects of my own friendships in these accounts, and Levine's analysis urged me to reflect on my ways of thinking about and dealing with friends of all shapes and sizes. Best Friends Forever is a well-written, thoughtful, and dynamic guide to having, keeping, and losing best friends.