Family Friends

De: Chloë Ashby

Brought to you by Penguin.

Since they first met at university twenty years ago, Maggie and Will have spent the last two weeks of every summer in France with their close friends, Lydia and Roland. Both families always look forward to this annual ritual – but this summer things are different.

Will has been hiding something from his wife, and is struggling to keep his deceit from seeping into the cracks in their marriage. Maggie is worried about their withdrawn teenage son. Roland is grappling with how to grieve the death of his first wife. Lydia is trying to ignore past chemistry with an old friend while learning to play second fiddle to a ghost.

Into this already conflicted fray steps Issy, Roland’s beguiling, irrepressible daughter from his first marriage. And as the August heat beats down, and the children behave in unexpected ways, the two couples find that tensions they have been trying their best to temper have begun to bubble over…

Family Friends is a deeply atmospheric, sophisticated and compelling novel about what happens when the ties of love and loyalty are stretched to the breaking point, how relationships change (and don’t change) over time, and how we navigate the challenges thrown at us in every season of life.

© Chloë Ashby 2026 (P) Penguin Audio 2026

Reseñas de la Crítica

A beautifully poised and riveting novel about the intricacies and entanglements of a group of friends holidaying in the south of France. I was gripped from the start

With FAMILY FRIENDS Ashby has created a piercing portrait of marriage, friendship and parenthood. It is a propulsive story with intrigue, secrecy and drama – I had a wonderful time reading it

With delicacy, sensitivity and atmospheric depth, Ashby writes the way I imagine an artist paints, with attention to the tiniest of details; it’s in this attention and astute observation that she so deftly captures what it means to love and to betray

All the hallmarks of a perfect literary holiday read: an idyllic setting, eclectic cast of characters, and multiple unresolved tensions that keep unfurling … Such is Ashby’s skill that you won’t want to put it down (other than to reapply your suncream)

Family Friends yanked me out of a reading slump. Ashby has such a precise eye for the detail that exactly fits the scene. Filmic and absorbing, I enjoyed it very much

Delicious! Chloë’s best yet … So good on the way that time ties knots in relationships that trip us up further down the line. Chloë is so patient with her characters, even when they’re making terrible mistakes, whilst also keeping us hooked on her tangled plot

An intelligent, evocative, elegant novel simmering with tension and drama. Family Friends is a forensic examination of friendship and desire, and the perils of mixing the two

More complicated family entanglements, secrets and lies, set against the backdrop of a sultry summer holiday in the South of France. Chloë writes in a painterly manner - with precision and subtlety

I read Family Friends in winter and was transported to a warm, languid summer in a French country house where two families gather yearly. In Chloë Ashby's expert hands, a hot summer is the perfect setting for mistakes to be made and for tensions to simmer until they reach a boiling point