The Thing About Tilly by G Benson is a powerful love story. It’s in the friends to lover’s trope. It’s more about how the love between friends can be complex, and when family love and expectations are in the mix, things get even more complicated. It’s full of emotion that sucks the reader in until they are a quivering wreck and have used a three-pack of tissues for the number of tears that accompany it.
Evie Chen is a Team Leader Social Worker working with people with disabilities and loving her job. She lives alone, although her best friend Tilly spends much of her time staying with her. She and Tilly have been close since they shared a room at Uni over ten years ago. They are so close that they often share a bed platonically.
Tilly Reeves is a freelance social media marketer and part-time waitress/barman; she is a total enigma to her friends. She often runs away and can be gone for a few days or for as long as a year. When she returns to her friends, she carries on with her life as if she never left.
The story starts with Evie devastated, thinking she may be pregnant, and Tilly is on one of her away trips. Evie, left alone by her friend, is upset, tearful, and angry. She has a positive pregnancy test, and Tilly gets home just as she sees the results.
The two women start to work out their lives and how they should support each other. A difficult path to follow as both women have secrets and lousy timing.
The Characters
Evie fell in love with Tilly six months after she met her. She considered it a mistake because Tilly was the closest and best friend she’d ever had, and Evie was still in the closet. Evie believed that the ‘in-love-with-your-best-friend cliché’ never went well and buried those feelings. Evie recognizes that they are in an eternal ‘after uni’ loop with all their friends, never seeming to be grown-up. She just can’t understand why Tilly leaves, although she has accepted it each time. Her pregnancy resulted from a one-night stand while drunk and angry after Tilly left again. Evie can’t decide if she wants or needs Tilly’s support. If she does need help, how will it work?
Tilly. Oh, Tilly. She makes Evie’s heart ache. Tilly has a big secret that she decides to share with Evie on the day that Evie finds she’s pregnant. Tilly decides to put that part of her on hold, keeps the secret, and supports Evie. She starts to make decisions about her short-term future to be there for Evie. Tilly needs to find some accommodation and work to pay for it becoming more self-supporting. She starts to make room for the baby in Evie’s home but at the same time hating what the separation is doing to her and Evie.
Two other characters deserve special mention. Firstly, Sean is the uni friend of both women, and they form a trio that has always supported each other. He tries to make sense of the relationship between the two women and calls them out on their behavior. Secondly, Lin is Evie’s mother and provides the most delightful one-liners relating to parenting and sex.
The Writing Style
Benson is a master at the craft of writing characters and has pulled together a disparate collection of people of different colors and sexuality with fine results. Each character ARC is beautifully developed and adds to the depth of the emotion of the story. The timing of each of the revelations is a tour de force, and the way things happen or don’t happen appears to be so easily done but needed a fine storyteller to make it work. Evie, Tilly, and Sean’s three contrasting perspectives add emotional conflict and turmoil to the story.
Pros And My Favourite Parts
The character development is, without a doubt, my favorite part of the book. However, my love for Tilly came a close second. I suspect we’ve all thought about (if not actually doing it) going missing at some point and wondering if we will be missed, and if so, by whom.
Cons And Heads Up
I found I needed a bit of patience to get into the first two or three chapters. But it was well worth the effort.
The Conclusion
Benson has written an unusual love story with echoes of love between friends and how their relationships develop over time. It has echoes of family and how family love can be supportive. It explores how secrets can become all-important and affect much more in your life than you could ever expect. If you add to this the premise that the timing is never right, you understand why this story is moving.
Benson has excelled with this thoughtfully written book. Go buy it with a three-pack of tissues.
TLDR (too long didn’t read)
This is more than a romance; it is an unusual love story. Evie and Tilly have been best friends for ten years, and their relationship has never moved forward. Tilly often runs away, and Evie is always there when she gets back. Evie gets pregnant during one absence, and the women have to work out their relationship.
Excerpt from The Thing About Tilly by G Benson
Numbly, she sat on the edge of the bath and stared down at it.
Her stomach twisted and for a second, she thought she was going to throw up, finally, but instead it kept twisting and Evie kept staring, eyes watering and not able to feel the fingers that she could see holding the stupid test that had to be wrong, except she knew it wasn’t.
Some stupid shots, a gin and tonic, and a decision she’d never thought of as bad until this very second. They’d used protection. But she’d been drunk. Had they been careful enough?
A knock at the door, the same one as before. Soft. “Evie?”
Her own breath was echoing in her ears. Fast. Too fast.
Was this what an anxiety attack felt like?
“Evie, I’m—I’m coming in, okay?”
She nodded. Distantly, she knew Tilly couldn’t see her, but she did it anyway. She watched her fingers curl around the stick and her knuckles go white. How odd, to watch something like that and not be aware you’d done it. She was used to being in touch with her body. For her nerves to let her know things.
And then Tilly was there, on her knees in front of her, her hands on Evie’s thighs and staring straight up at her, eyes dark, almost black, wide with worry and a crease in her brow.
“Evie? What’s wrong?”
And Evie’s tongue wouldn’t work, the words wouldn’t come, so she held up the stick and those pink lines stared at them both.
Tilly’s cheeks went sallow. “You’re pregnant?”
And Evie threw up, not for the first time in her life, on Tilly’s lap.
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Bits and Bobs
- ISBN number: 9788409250028
- Publisher: Indie author
- G Benson Online
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