Mhaire McFalrane's has now become an auto-read author for me - and I can tell you that in recent years my list of such authors has become shorter and shorter. What McFarlane does so well in each of her women's fiction/chick lit/romance/fiction novels is to dive into the depths of the emotionally fraught relationships we have with one another and how complicated love (whether it's for family, friends or a significant other) can be.
As Just Last Night opens a group of long-time friends are playing trivia at a bar (something they do once a week). They are Eve, Justin, Susie and Ed who have been friends since their school days. Though they are a seeming group of platonic friends there are undercurrents that may upset the balance. Eve has been secretly in love with Ed for years, so secretly that she's never even told Susie, her best friend. But as the night goes on two major events will throw Eve into a tailspin and into a realization that perhaps she was not the only one who had secrets.
Though this novel is told from Eve's point of view, each of the other characters in her orbit are fully realized people with flaws and messiness of their own. My one caveat for an otherwise rave review is that while Eve and her friends journeys in coming to grips with the major changes they're facing is compelling and emotionally satisfying, a romance that develops later in the book wasn't as fully fleshed out as I'd have liked. That said, if you want a book that will grab you from page one, lift you up with humor and take you down with emotional depth? This is the book for you.