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Girl's Girl: A Novel
NATIONAL BESTSELLER A “lustrous debut”* and a sundrenched and dewy snapshot of modern girl culture set in the blaze of one suburban Midwest summer
“Feldman brings an Austenian attentiveness to the foibles of suburban adolescence. . . . The pleasure of Girl’s Girl is that it reveals the invisible jealousies, affections and gnawing needs lurking at the edge of so many seemingly trivial images of young womanhood.”—Sanjena Sathian, The New York Times Book Review*
Fifteen-year-old Mina’s whole world is her two best friends, but after an unexpected kiss, the established dynamics of their trio quickly unravel. Everything that was once shared openly, from clothes to secrets, now feels impossibly fragile. Loyalties shift and tensions simmer across the long days of this pivotal summer, where the girls have nowhere new to go and everything new to feel.
Looking back, an adult Mina traces the undercurrents of longing that shaped her first experience of desire. The rituals of girlhood—gossip, selfies, sleepovers, and videogames—become threads in a delicate, volatile web of intimacy, in which everything feels achingly fleeting and permanently etched. Loving one person, Mina learns, can change the way we love everyone else—including ourselves.
“Feldman brings an Austenian attentiveness to the foibles of suburban adolescence. . . . The pleasure of Girl’s Girl is that it reveals the invisible jealousies, affections and gnawing needs lurking at the edge of so many seemingly trivial images of young womanhood.”—Sanjena Sathian, The New York Times Book Review*
Fifteen-year-old Mina’s whole world is her two best friends, but after an unexpected kiss, the established dynamics of their trio quickly unravel. Everything that was once shared openly, from clothes to secrets, now feels impossibly fragile. Loyalties shift and tensions simmer across the long days of this pivotal summer, where the girls have nowhere new to go and everything new to feel.
Looking back, an adult Mina traces the undercurrents of longing that shaped her first experience of desire. The rituals of girlhood—gossip, selfies, sleepovers, and videogames—become threads in a delicate, volatile web of intimacy, in which everything feels achingly fleeting and permanently etched. Loving one person, Mina learns, can change the way we love everyone else—including ourselves.
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First published June 2, 2026
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June 22, 2026one of life's most prestigious titles
(thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)
(thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)
June 6, 2026
⋆⁺₊⋆ ☀︎ ⋆⁺₊⋆ 3.5 stars ⋆⁺₊⋆ ☀︎ ⋆⁺₊⋆
this book is a lovely, poignant portrayal of girlhood and all of its joys and pains.
the story is told from the perspective of Mina as she reflects on a significant summer when she was 15. Mina and her two best friends, Margaret and Eleanor, are nearly inseparable. during this summer, however, a kiss (and feelings) between two of them threatens to disrupt the entire balance of their trio. we get to reflect with Mina as the friends fall apart, keep secrets, gossip, come together, adventure together, and get into some teenage trouble. it is worth mentioning that this is modern, so the girls have texting, DMs, social media, etc.
this is an exploration of friendship, desire, angst, getting to know yourself during your teen years, and the nostalgia of childhood summers.
the entire story is largely character-based rather than plot-driven but i still flew through it. this made me reminisce on so many aspects/memories/experiences of my pre-teen and teenage years. i love a coming-of-age story like this — and it always hits so hard during the summer months.
if the synopsis of this story sounds interesting to you, i recommend picking this up. you'll get summer vibes, good writing, memorable characters, and the chance to relive girlhood. it's also not very long (241 pages, i believe).
⋆⁺₊⋆ ☀︎ ⋆⁺₊⋆ summer tbr prompt: literary fiction ⋆⁺₊⋆ ☀︎ ⋆⁺₊⋆
this book is a lovely, poignant portrayal of girlhood and all of its joys and pains.
the story is told from the perspective of Mina as she reflects on a significant summer when she was 15. Mina and her two best friends, Margaret and Eleanor, are nearly inseparable. during this summer, however, a kiss (and feelings) between two of them threatens to disrupt the entire balance of their trio. we get to reflect with Mina as the friends fall apart, keep secrets, gossip, come together, adventure together, and get into some teenage trouble. it is worth mentioning that this is modern, so the girls have texting, DMs, social media, etc.
this is an exploration of friendship, desire, angst, getting to know yourself during your teen years, and the nostalgia of childhood summers.
the entire story is largely character-based rather than plot-driven but i still flew through it. this made me reminisce on so many aspects/memories/experiences of my pre-teen and teenage years. i love a coming-of-age story like this — and it always hits so hard during the summer months.
if the synopsis of this story sounds interesting to you, i recommend picking this up. you'll get summer vibes, good writing, memorable characters, and the chance to relive girlhood. it's also not very long (241 pages, i believe).
⋆⁺₊⋆ ☀︎ ⋆⁺₊⋆ summer tbr prompt: literary fiction ⋆⁺₊⋆ ☀︎ ⋆⁺₊⋆
March 10, 2026
what a rare and precious thing this book is—the last line made me burst into tears on the spot.
June 22, 2026
Ugh, I miss them already.
How nice to start June with such a great book about how beautiful and how hard it is to be a girl falling in love with a girl. As someone who once experienced the same thrilling hardship, with its rollercoaster of heart-warming and heartbreaking sensations that sometimes happen all at once, this book was already relatable enough as is, but some of its characteristics made it almost an uncanny read for me. It's impossible to extricate my feelings for the book from how intimate it felt for me. I literally have lived entire scenes of this book to an alarming degree of detail, and I love how universally positioned it made me feel.
Girl's Girl explores the relationship of a trio of best friends during the summer of their fifteenth year. Right from the first line in the book you're made aware of its sapphic nature in a blunt and direct way that I found comforting and reassuring, because it set the tone for the whole novel. Mina is a protagonist with a very prominent trait: she's hard at lying and the best at following rules, which means that whatever she feels or thinks, the reader gets to know right away: she can't help herself. She orbits around her two best friends, a childhood bff called Margaret who's a social butterfly who's always eager to flutter away in a crowd, and a more recent bff called Eleanor, who is sharp and confident but has a hard time communicating her softer self. She loves both with a disarming intensity, though she loves them in different ways...
The shiny crown jewel of this book is the full grasp it has on the minutiae of girlhood dynamics, the wonderful sensibility it provides when dealing with the unspoken rules and unseen gestures that guide teenage relationships: the subtleties, the silences that mean more than words, the small shifts that can tilt the fabric of reality, entire conversations that happen only through short glances and body language, the strict balancing of status quo, the misunderstandings through insecurities, all of it. The author understands girlness in a meaningful way and is able to thoroughly guide the reader through the inner workings of girlness, to make sense and order of what looks like complete chaos to the outside eye. Watching Mina go through her summer of self-discovery is delightful because she is both incredibly complex and incredibly simple, like all girls are, but not everyone can lay out the step-by-step of it with such ease.
I fell very much in love with the three of them, especially Eleanor, who I both relate to and fell in love with (what does this say about me??), and I loved all the Sailor Moon references. It still irks me to read books that are so centered around social media behaviour, since I am repelled by it irl, but here it adds a sort of necessary tension and yet another layer of micro-managing of aspects of girlhood, another layer of micro-meanings to be interpreted by an already clustered analytical mind. It was also a very no-tw book, which to me is a big deal: I love queer stories that can focus on just being sweet and sour without the mandatory addition of trauma and bigotry. And I really loved the ending! I thought it was unexpected and ideal at the same time.
Yay for girls who love girls! ˖ ᡣ𐭩 ⊹ ࣪ ౨ৎ˚₊
How nice to start June with such a great book about how beautiful and how hard it is to be a girl falling in love with a girl. As someone who once experienced the same thrilling hardship, with its rollercoaster of heart-warming and heartbreaking sensations that sometimes happen all at once, this book was already relatable enough as is, but some of its characteristics made it almost an uncanny read for me. It's impossible to extricate my feelings for the book from how intimate it felt for me. I literally have lived entire scenes of this book to an alarming degree of detail, and I love how universally positioned it made me feel.
Girl's Girl explores the relationship of a trio of best friends during the summer of their fifteenth year. Right from the first line in the book you're made aware of its sapphic nature in a blunt and direct way that I found comforting and reassuring, because it set the tone for the whole novel. Mina is a protagonist with a very prominent trait: she's hard at lying and the best at following rules, which means that whatever she feels or thinks, the reader gets to know right away: she can't help herself. She orbits around her two best friends, a childhood bff called Margaret who's a social butterfly who's always eager to flutter away in a crowd, and a more recent bff called Eleanor, who is sharp and confident but has a hard time communicating her softer self. She loves both with a disarming intensity, though she loves them in different ways...
The shiny crown jewel of this book is the full grasp it has on the minutiae of girlhood dynamics, the wonderful sensibility it provides when dealing with the unspoken rules and unseen gestures that guide teenage relationships: the subtleties, the silences that mean more than words, the small shifts that can tilt the fabric of reality, entire conversations that happen only through short glances and body language, the strict balancing of status quo, the misunderstandings through insecurities, all of it. The author understands girlness in a meaningful way and is able to thoroughly guide the reader through the inner workings of girlness, to make sense and order of what looks like complete chaos to the outside eye. Watching Mina go through her summer of self-discovery is delightful because she is both incredibly complex and incredibly simple, like all girls are, but not everyone can lay out the step-by-step of it with such ease.
I fell very much in love with the three of them, especially Eleanor, who I both relate to and fell in love with (what does this say about me??), and I loved all the Sailor Moon references. It still irks me to read books that are so centered around social media behaviour, since I am repelled by it irl, but here it adds a sort of necessary tension and yet another layer of micro-managing of aspects of girlhood, another layer of micro-meanings to be interpreted by an already clustered analytical mind. It was also a very no-tw book, which to me is a big deal: I love queer stories that can focus on just being sweet and sour without the mandatory addition of trauma and bigotry. And I really loved the ending! I thought it was unexpected and ideal at the same time.
Yay for girls who love girls! ˖ ᡣ𐭩 ⊹ ࣪ ౨ৎ˚₊
December 8, 2025
This book was not for me, and I mean that in the literal sense. This book was written for people who will relate to it (i.e., not me). It aligns with how the current mainstream white feminist discourse describes “girlhood” in that it represents a particular experience of growing up white, upper middle class, neurotypical, and conventionally attractive. I’m just over it. Mina and her friends didn’t remind me of myself as a teenager; they reminded me of the popular girls in high school who seemed to operate under the belief that whatever was going on with them and their friends was the most important thing in the world. I was annoyed by it at fifteen, and I’m annoyed by it at twenty.
I do understand why other readers would really connect with this book. It’s a book for women who grew up like Mina, and there’s nothing wrong with that; what irks me is that it’s described as a “snapshot of modern girl culture” when the slice of “modern girls” it represents is really quite thin. I think Feldman did a great job of portraying these characters and their emotions; I just didn’t enjoy reading about them. There are plenty of books I enjoy that focus on characters I dislike, but those stories don’t require the reader to relate to the protagonists. This one does.
I think the title is pretty apt. One aspect of shallow internet feminism that bothers me is this obsession with labelling oneself “girls’ girl” while simultaneously not giving a fuck about girls who don’t fit in with the status quo, and that is absolutely the vibe I got from the main characters. Of course, they are teenagers—I don’t expect them to have a mature understanding of the world and their place in it. Still, I found myself rolling my eyes at how obsessed these girls are with being attractive and other people knowing they’re attractive (and I think I would have been annoyed by this when I was their age, too). There were a couple of brief moments around the middle of the book when Mina experienced fleeting glimpses of self-awareness, but these were passed over very quickly.
Unfortunately, the writing style in this book also didn’t work for me. I found the prose to be painfully overwritten. I’m sure some readers would enjoy the style, but it felt forced to me.
There were some things I did like. I thought the pacing was great, and the three distinctive mother-daughter relationships were done very well. I also appreciated the representation of teen sexuality. The conclusion of the story felt realistic and meaningful.
I would like to reiterate that, despite my low rating, I think a certain type of reader would absolutely love Girls’ Girl. I do hope that this book finds its community, and that I start doing a better job of vetting books on NetGalley before requesting them.
***Thank you to NetGalley and The Dial press for giving me a free advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.***
I do understand why other readers would really connect with this book. It’s a book for women who grew up like Mina, and there’s nothing wrong with that; what irks me is that it’s described as a “snapshot of modern girl culture” when the slice of “modern girls” it represents is really quite thin. I think Feldman did a great job of portraying these characters and their emotions; I just didn’t enjoy reading about them. There are plenty of books I enjoy that focus on characters I dislike, but those stories don’t require the reader to relate to the protagonists. This one does.
I think the title is pretty apt. One aspect of shallow internet feminism that bothers me is this obsession with labelling oneself “girls’ girl” while simultaneously not giving a fuck about girls who don’t fit in with the status quo, and that is absolutely the vibe I got from the main characters. Of course, they are teenagers—I don’t expect them to have a mature understanding of the world and their place in it. Still, I found myself rolling my eyes at how obsessed these girls are with being attractive and other people knowing they’re attractive (and I think I would have been annoyed by this when I was their age, too). There were a couple of brief moments around the middle of the book when Mina experienced fleeting glimpses of self-awareness, but these were passed over very quickly.
Unfortunately, the writing style in this book also didn’t work for me. I found the prose to be painfully overwritten. I’m sure some readers would enjoy the style, but it felt forced to me.
There were some things I did like. I thought the pacing was great, and the three distinctive mother-daughter relationships were done very well. I also appreciated the representation of teen sexuality. The conclusion of the story felt realistic and meaningful.
I would like to reiterate that, despite my low rating, I think a certain type of reader would absolutely love Girls’ Girl. I do hope that this book finds its community, and that I start doing a better job of vetting books on NetGalley before requesting them.
***Thank you to NetGalley and The Dial press for giving me a free advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.***
December 12, 2025
4.75
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an advanced readers copy in exchange for an honest review. This book was the most evocative and vivid portrayal of girlhood that i’ve read in a while. Every feeling in this book is something I think most girls have felt in their youth. From posing for fake pictures to mae others jealous and the confusion of being in a trio friend group every part of this book felt like reading a diary that could have easily been my own. The characters are all so flawed in the way that only teenage girls can get away with and it feels like watching yourself from afar. The underlying romance was so well written but didn’t take away from what at its core is a book about friendship. The only critique i have is that it wants longer but that’s just me selfishly wanted to stay in this nostalgia painted world for just a little bit longer. This is already in my top new releases of 2026 and the year hasn’t even started yet.
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an advanced readers copy in exchange for an honest review. This book was the most evocative and vivid portrayal of girlhood that i’ve read in a while. Every feeling in this book is something I think most girls have felt in their youth. From posing for fake pictures to mae others jealous and the confusion of being in a trio friend group every part of this book felt like reading a diary that could have easily been my own. The characters are all so flawed in the way that only teenage girls can get away with and it feels like watching yourself from afar. The underlying romance was so well written but didn’t take away from what at its core is a book about friendship. The only critique i have is that it wants longer but that’s just me selfishly wanted to stay in this nostalgia painted world for just a little bit longer. This is already in my top new releases of 2026 and the year hasn’t even started yet.
December 10, 2025
ARC for review. To be published June 2, 2026.
4 stars
It’s summer (Oh, do I wish it was summer. We have snow here. Snow. We never get snow until January and even then almost none. I’m afraid it may be a rough winter. But I digress.) Mina is fifteen. The most important thing in her world are her two best friends, Margaret and Eleanor, also fifteen. But what happens when one of those friendships becomes more?
It’s been a long time since I was that age but this felt so honest to me; not the way we want teenagers to act, but the way the actually do, with all the small stuff, the day to day navigations required just to maintain friendships. I really loved this and I loved all three girls, even with their faults, maybe especially with their faults.
***Edited to add: this is a debut? Bumping this up to five stars. It was a close call anyway, but knowing it’s the author’s first novel, well, I’ll be looking for more from her, and if she just wants to spend her career writing female coming of age stories, I’m here for that!
4 stars
It’s summer (Oh, do I wish it was summer. We have snow here. Snow. We never get snow until January and even then almost none. I’m afraid it may be a rough winter. But I digress.) Mina is fifteen. The most important thing in her world are her two best friends, Margaret and Eleanor, also fifteen. But what happens when one of those friendships becomes more?
It’s been a long time since I was that age but this felt so honest to me; not the way we want teenagers to act, but the way the actually do, with all the small stuff, the day to day navigations required just to maintain friendships. I really loved this and I loved all three girls, even with their faults, maybe especially with their faults.
***Edited to add: this is a debut? Bumping this up to five stars. It was a close call anyway, but knowing it’s the author’s first novel, well, I’ll be looking for more from her, and if she just wants to spend her career writing female coming of age stories, I’m here for that!
June 11, 2026
It’s so perfect and nostalgic and mundane and deep
November 12, 2025
an absolutely perfect novel. i don't know how sonia does what she does. for a book to hit this hard while reading as a .docx means there's some real magic here. cannot wait to hold the physical copy in my hands and for ms. feldman to take the literary world by STORM. the more time that passes since i read this the more i am in awe of sonia's ability to write from the POV of a teenage protagonist without sounding like an adult ventriloquizing a teenager while still being a book that adults will want to read. very rare talent!!!!
November 21, 2025
I adore coming of age books like this one. This gave me so much nostalgia about girlhood and I love the focus on the desire, confusion, and other emotions we feel as females. It was a lighthearted read that moved at a fast pace and really held my attention. I actually was taken back to my younger years and my own female friendships when I read this book. I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
June 18, 2026
omfg beautiful teenage girl friendships and crushes on each other I LOVED IT
while its not really at all how my teenage experience was - popular girls, boys who like them, underage drinking and mischief - i really loved this glimpse into mina's life, and how her experience of 'girlhood' was so tied to same sex attraction without it being something strange or revelatory.
i personally love slice of ife novels, and this was a great snapshot into intense female friendships that are underscored by utter devotion.
while its not really at all how my teenage experience was - popular girls, boys who like them, underage drinking and mischief - i really loved this glimpse into mina's life, and how her experience of 'girlhood' was so tied to same sex attraction without it being something strange or revelatory.
i personally love slice of ife novels, and this was a great snapshot into intense female friendships that are underscored by utter devotion.
June 9, 2026
4.5
A book where nothing happens but everything happens at the same time.
Set during a steamy summer in Ohio, a close group of three 15 year old girls have their friendship jolted when an unexpected kiss happens between two of them.
I loved the writing and related way too hard to the main characters.
A book where nothing happens but everything happens at the same time.
Set during a steamy summer in Ohio, a close group of three 15 year old girls have their friendship jolted when an unexpected kiss happens between two of them.
I loved the writing and related way too hard to the main characters.
March 7, 2026
It took some time, deliberation, and patience for me to figure out how I felt about this book, which I suppose is appropriate given that this is a very slow and reflective narrative about a trio of young teenage besties (Mina, Margaret, and Eleanor), over the course of a summer, as they develop understanding of their identity, sexuality, friendships, and romantic relationships. In particular, it is a queer coming of age story of protagonist Mina, who develops more-than-friend feelings for one of the group.
This book is mostly Mina’s interior monologue as she reflects back on her youth from adulthood, and the narration comes across as a mix of Mina’s youthful firsthand perspective tempered and moderated by her wiser adult introspection. The book is a character study, to put it mildly, and takes vibes-over-plot to a new level: for instance, the first quarter of the book, along with many other swaths of it, consists solely of the girls hanging out in the heat, idly gossiping, playing Sims, and doing hair/makeup/clothing (and of course, posting pics and checking socials). There are other parts of the book where the girls might be doing something a bit more dramatic, such as navigating the socially fraught atmosphere of the county fair, and then there are still other large portions where the girls are Kind Of In A Fight and totally ignoring one another, and so Mina is just ruminating in her bedroom and marinating in All The Feels. This is definitely all very “Marcel Proust writes privileged white suburban Ohio teenage girls,” and it won’t be for everyone, but the writing is pretty beautiful and perceptive and I’m glad I stuck with it all.
I was also super grateful that this book is gay, because I have to admit that I may have found it all rather insufferable without the added importance and complication of this representation. The story compelled much more of my empathy and investment when, amidst navigating all the teen girl developmental hurdles that are already so difficult, Mina must also navigate the additional challenge of realizing she is gay and in love with a best friend. I have to say without this “hook” to provide more relevance and weight to the story, I would have had a very hard time relating to these girls who are, again, extremely privileged in all the traditional senses and don’t seem to have an inch of space for any of the additional anxieties and cares that preoccupied me as they have many other teens: safety (personal, household, neighborhood, the planet), financial security, health, etc.
All that being said, this is a very realistic (at least with regard to these characters) and respectful portrait of teen girls and their relationships with one another (as well as with their mothers), and I think I can avoid all spoilers while saying that I really appreciated that we can have these stories today without them being totally tragic. There was a historical time when even women authors of the liberated young ladies of literature had to circle back and punish their creations by capsizing them in their rowboats, compelling them to OD on their insomnia tinctures, or worse. Nothing like that happens here: it’s all just growth, and while girls may be crushing, nobody gets crushed.
Many thanks to the author, NetGalley, and Random House/The Dial Press for the ARC of Girl’s Girl, expected for release on June 2, 2026.
This book is mostly Mina’s interior monologue as she reflects back on her youth from adulthood, and the narration comes across as a mix of Mina’s youthful firsthand perspective tempered and moderated by her wiser adult introspection. The book is a character study, to put it mildly, and takes vibes-over-plot to a new level: for instance, the first quarter of the book, along with many other swaths of it, consists solely of the girls hanging out in the heat, idly gossiping, playing Sims, and doing hair/makeup/clothing (and of course, posting pics and checking socials). There are other parts of the book where the girls might be doing something a bit more dramatic, such as navigating the socially fraught atmosphere of the county fair, and then there are still other large portions where the girls are Kind Of In A Fight and totally ignoring one another, and so Mina is just ruminating in her bedroom and marinating in All The Feels. This is definitely all very “Marcel Proust writes privileged white suburban Ohio teenage girls,” and it won’t be for everyone, but the writing is pretty beautiful and perceptive and I’m glad I stuck with it all.
I was also super grateful that this book is gay, because I have to admit that I may have found it all rather insufferable without the added importance and complication of this representation. The story compelled much more of my empathy and investment when, amidst navigating all the teen girl developmental hurdles that are already so difficult, Mina must also navigate the additional challenge of realizing she is gay and in love with a best friend. I have to say without this “hook” to provide more relevance and weight to the story, I would have had a very hard time relating to these girls who are, again, extremely privileged in all the traditional senses and don’t seem to have an inch of space for any of the additional anxieties and cares that preoccupied me as they have many other teens: safety (personal, household, neighborhood, the planet), financial security, health, etc.
All that being said, this is a very realistic (at least with regard to these characters) and respectful portrait of teen girls and their relationships with one another (as well as with their mothers), and I think I can avoid all spoilers while saying that I really appreciated that we can have these stories today without them being totally tragic. There was a historical time when even women authors of the liberated young ladies of literature had to circle back and punish their creations by capsizing them in their rowboats, compelling them to OD on their insomnia tinctures, or worse. Nothing like that happens here: it’s all just growth, and while girls may be crushing, nobody gets crushed.
Many thanks to the author, NetGalley, and Random House/The Dial Press for the ARC of Girl’s Girl, expected for release on June 2, 2026.
February 4, 2026
2.75/5
Firstly thank you NetGalley, Random House, the Dial Press, and Sonia Feldman for gifting me with this ARC to review! While this book wasn’t for me, I’m sure there are plenty of people who would enjoy this debut novel.
Liked:
-the premise of teen dynamics, figuring out sexuality and different types of love. This is more of a modern take on teen dynamics which entails: selfies/pictures for every occasion, the self importance, and caring about how others perceive you. Now I will say I don’t think it’s a great overall view of modern teen girls. I’d say it’s a very narrow view into white, middle class, attractive teen girls. I enjoyed the lesbian/queer representation and that no one had an issue with it (again not very accurate to real world, but still it was nice).
Disliked:
-the writing had way too much purple prose for me to enjoy it thoroughly. Listen I’m all for explaining things in a complex way but Mina’s inner thoughts and her descriptions of the past as an adult were just too much.
-the pacing. It’s a very slow read, despite it only being about 256 pages. It picks up a bit around the 60% mark but not by much. It got a bit boring for me to read about how much Mina, Margaret, and Eleanor would ignore and not spend time with each other.
-the sims game play stuff. I could’ve done without the whole dive into the gameplay and emphasis on it lol. It’s not a major deal but still I just wanted to skip past it and move to the next scene.
Firstly thank you NetGalley, Random House, the Dial Press, and Sonia Feldman for gifting me with this ARC to review! While this book wasn’t for me, I’m sure there are plenty of people who would enjoy this debut novel.
Liked:
-the premise of teen dynamics, figuring out sexuality and different types of love. This is more of a modern take on teen dynamics which entails: selfies/pictures for every occasion, the self importance, and caring about how others perceive you. Now I will say I don’t think it’s a great overall view of modern teen girls. I’d say it’s a very narrow view into white, middle class, attractive teen girls. I enjoyed the lesbian/queer representation and that no one had an issue with it (again not very accurate to real world, but still it was nice).
Disliked:
-the writing had way too much purple prose for me to enjoy it thoroughly. Listen I’m all for explaining things in a complex way but Mina’s inner thoughts and her descriptions of the past as an adult were just too much.
-the pacing. It’s a very slow read, despite it only being about 256 pages. It picks up a bit around the 60% mark but not by much. It got a bit boring for me to read about how much Mina, Margaret, and Eleanor would ignore and not spend time with each other.
-the sims game play stuff. I could’ve done without the whole dive into the gameplay and emphasis on it lol. It’s not a major deal but still I just wanted to skip past it and move to the next scene.
Read
May 15, 2026This book is a love letter to girlhood. It perfectly captures how there is nothing as equally serious and unserious as being a teenager. It felt wildly nostalgic, bittersweet, and sharp.
One of my favorite parts of this book is how it feels sort of timeless. There are smartphones and social media, but the vibes are a fun mix of 90s/2000s and 2010s/present day. I also really appreciated that there’s not a single speck of homophobia in the story. Though there is plenty of angst, none of it really has to do with being queer. Finally, I also loved how visceral and intense the Midwestern summer described here felt. The heat, humidity, and storminess building and breaking all summer long. The story was very much about Mina and her friends, but in some ways I felt the setting was just as vividly portrayed. It really heightened the sense of claustrophobia present throughout the story.
I’m excited to see what this author does next! I’m not sure what I’d recommend for similar vibes… maybe “Dogs of Summer” by Andrea Abreu (intense/codependent friendship, great writing, but younger protagonists and much darker). Maybe “I Kissed Shara Wheeler” by Casey McQuiston (more enemies to lovers than friends to lovers, also more plotty than vibes-y).
Thank you to NetGalley and Dial Press for the digital arc.
One of my favorite parts of this book is how it feels sort of timeless. There are smartphones and social media, but the vibes are a fun mix of 90s/2000s and 2010s/present day. I also really appreciated that there’s not a single speck of homophobia in the story. Though there is plenty of angst, none of it really has to do with being queer. Finally, I also loved how visceral and intense the Midwestern summer described here felt. The heat, humidity, and storminess building and breaking all summer long. The story was very much about Mina and her friends, but in some ways I felt the setting was just as vividly portrayed. It really heightened the sense of claustrophobia present throughout the story.
I’m excited to see what this author does next! I’m not sure what I’d recommend for similar vibes… maybe “Dogs of Summer” by Andrea Abreu (intense/codependent friendship, great writing, but younger protagonists and much darker). Maybe “I Kissed Shara Wheeler” by Casey McQuiston (more enemies to lovers than friends to lovers, also more plotty than vibes-y).
Thank you to NetGalley and Dial Press for the digital arc.
June 6, 2026
Girl’s Girl brought me right back to being fifteen. The friendships, the first love, the changing relationships with the people who know you best. It felt incredibly authentic and relatable. I loved the sapphic romance and the girls discovering that, the nuanced mother-daughter relationship, and the way this book captured that one pivotal summer that changes everything :’) The suburban setting felt so familiar to me (suburban legends), and as a Sims-obsessed teenager, those references were the best to meeeeee.
Tender, nostalgic, full of heart, this is a coming-of-age story that reminded me just how transformative those teenage years can be. I love her writing and the descriptive setting! The details on feelings to paper. Happily will read more from Sonia!
Tender, nostalgic, full of heart, this is a coming-of-age story that reminded me just how transformative those teenage years can be. I love her writing and the descriptive setting! The details on feelings to paper. Happily will read more from Sonia!
June 2, 2026
Mina's friendship with Margaret and Eleanor is at the center of her world—until she starts to wonder whether she and Eleanor might become something more, and whether or not the friendship can survive it.
Margaret made my world large. Eleanor made it into a room only the two of us could enter. It was a room in which Eleanor kept her hand on the doorknob. (loc. 2109*)
Give me all the platonic friendship books, honestly—and yes, despite the fact that the major conflict of the book is a will-they-won't-they romantic relationship, this is fundamentally a platonic friendship book. Mina is as close as close can be with her friends, but it's not a friendship without its pitfalls and perils: For Mina, being fifteen means constantly weighing up how who will react to what; actions and consequences; being interesting enough but not too interesting, and willing enough but not a pushover; being fifteen means knowing who she is in her group but also starting to understand that that things can't stay the same forever...and that she doesn't want them to.
This is not a kind of friendship I ever had—intense ones, yes, but not this kind of simultaneous certainty and uncertainty, not this kind of constant calculation and evaluation and reevaluation. But other things: It genuinely hadn't occurred to me that teenage girls playing the Sims together (something I did back in the 90s!) was something that persists, albeit now with the Sims 4 instead of the OG Sims. I think that in particular really hit the nail on the head for me in terms of the way these girls are just on the cusp of something—growing up but not quite ready to let everything go.
The book is told over the course of a summer, though Mina is looking back from the relative wisdom of adulthood. That's one of few things that gave me some pause as I read; I think I would have preferred the perspective to stay a little closer to Mina at fifteen. Then again...maybe not. It would make for Mina being unusually perceptive. Maybe I just didn't necessarily want the last bit where we speed up to the present, whenever that happens to be, and get the barest taste of where things have gone since this one summer.
A high four stars. One for overthinkers who like a good coming-of-age friendship (and then some) story. I think I'll be (over)thinking this on and off for a while.
*Quotes are from an ARC and may not be final.
Thanks to the author and publisher for inviting me to read a review copy through NetGalley.
Margaret made my world large. Eleanor made it into a room only the two of us could enter. It was a room in which Eleanor kept her hand on the doorknob. (loc. 2109*)
Give me all the platonic friendship books, honestly—and yes, despite the fact that the major conflict of the book is a will-they-won't-they romantic relationship, this is fundamentally a platonic friendship book. Mina is as close as close can be with her friends, but it's not a friendship without its pitfalls and perils: For Mina, being fifteen means constantly weighing up how who will react to what; actions and consequences; being interesting enough but not too interesting, and willing enough but not a pushover; being fifteen means knowing who she is in her group but also starting to understand that that things can't stay the same forever...and that she doesn't want them to.
This is not a kind of friendship I ever had—intense ones, yes, but not this kind of simultaneous certainty and uncertainty, not this kind of constant calculation and evaluation and reevaluation. But other things: It genuinely hadn't occurred to me that teenage girls playing the Sims together (something I did back in the 90s!) was something that persists, albeit now with the Sims 4 instead of the OG Sims. I think that in particular really hit the nail on the head for me in terms of the way these girls are just on the cusp of something—growing up but not quite ready to let everything go.
The book is told over the course of a summer, though Mina is looking back from the relative wisdom of adulthood. That's one of few things that gave me some pause as I read; I think I would have preferred the perspective to stay a little closer to Mina at fifteen. Then again...maybe not. It would make for Mina being unusually perceptive. Maybe I just didn't necessarily want the last bit where we speed up to the present, whenever that happens to be, and get the barest taste of where things have gone since this one summer.
A high four stars. One for overthinkers who like a good coming-of-age friendship (and then some) story. I think I'll be (over)thinking this on and off for a while.
*Quotes are from an ARC and may not be final.
Thanks to the author and publisher for inviting me to read a review copy through NetGalley.
June 3, 2026
I had to force myself to finish this book. Am I maybe too old for a “nostalgic girlhood feeling” type of book?
It felt… exhausting? Irritating? Obnoxious? Not one of the three main characters was likable. The plot did not exist. And the narrator would slip off into these deep thoughts after having just described how they contoured their breasts for an hour???? I’m realizing that maybe this was the experience of *some* high school girls (so sorry ladies)… but NOT my own… and I would bet? Not most other girls. It’s just… a couple hundred pages of awful.
Sorry. Not happening for me.
I read this advanced copy as a gift from NetGalley and the publisher.
It felt… exhausting? Irritating? Obnoxious? Not one of the three main characters was likable. The plot did not exist. And the narrator would slip off into these deep thoughts after having just described how they contoured their breasts for an hour???? I’m realizing that maybe this was the experience of *some* high school girls (so sorry ladies)… but NOT my own… and I would bet? Not most other girls. It’s just… a couple hundred pages of awful.
Sorry. Not happening for me.
I read this advanced copy as a gift from NetGalley and the publisher.
June 6, 2026
It’s such a special thing to be a teenage girl and love your friends and feel everything so intensely and figure out who you are !! I equally miss it so much and would literally never want to do it again
May 31, 2026
the last line made me feel like i got punched in the gut. earth just spun off it’s axis. i loved every second of this. a beautiful beautiful book!!!
thank you sm to dial and prh for the arc & audio!!!
thank you sm to dial and prh for the arc & audio!!!
February 4, 2026
i really really loved this. not much happened but you grow to really love and relate to these characters. it felt perfectly nostalgic.. not because i grew up in love with my best friend, but the way friendship throuples feel imbalanced (especially when you want to fit in) at age 15. we also get the perfect depiction of the complicated mother/daughter relationship as a teenager and i laughed out loud so many times at some of mina’s inner monologue about her mother. “one benefit of mothers is the permanent availability of a person with whom to disagree.” so many great quotes from this book, i did not want to put it down. the perfect coming of age summertime novel. thank you to netgalley and the publisher for the e-arc 🩵
June 5, 2026
very strange reading experience as someone who grew up in suburban ohio and also spent my teenage years putting 8 layers of mascara on, turning entire hang outs into excuses to take pictures, had a Secret Girlfriend and spent too much time playing the sims and loved sailor moon. like sonia feldman why are you in my walls.....
captured the weight every small social interaction has when you're that age, the way every conversation feels like a quick time event with instant ramifications you may not expect. the scene where it's friday night and they get extremely dressed up in hopes of finding plans, despite being 15 and having no friends with cars, acccess to parties/bars, etc and just end up sitting in a diner in their town populated by suburban nuclear families KILLED ME....
some small complaints:
(-) post-fair, the last 60 or so pages do lose some tension/charm/whatever for me... like the spell this had me under went away and couldn't come back. but the ending was good enough for it to turn back around
(-) the font this book is set in is one of my favorite to use in graphic design work, but one of my least favorites for reading anything long form in. it needed to be a bigger size, or a font with more weight to it - i shouldn't be reading a book in daylight, in good lighting, and it hurting my eyes
(-) there are a few over used descriptor terms (most of which i forgot because i was too into this to make my usual notes) that are used WAY too frequently for how short of a book this is.
memories this book stirred up:
1. i had a friend group where our only ties to each other were the 8 layer of mascara photoshoot sessions + the sims + liking twilight. one day, for seemingly no real reason i could detect, my main anchor to this friend group started walking in the halls with a different friend, invited this same friend for a friday night sleepover instead of me, dwindling me out of her life without so much as a conversation. i, as a hyper sensitive autistic teenager who was also a closeted lesbian, reacted Very Normally to this and wrote a deeply heartfelt 3 page letter that was tear stained. i read it out loud to a mutual friend who listened silently, and only said: i think you shouldn't give this to her
2. out trick or treating with a friend (i think my last year doing it, and one of those years where we felt embarrassed and too old once we were out of the house) where we saw the third member of our trio who had claimed she had "family plans" and couldn't go out with us, with another group from school. we walked past them on purpose 8 different times to Send a Message.
3. my mom ripping through my bedroom, ransacking my drawers, on a hunch about the Baby Lesbianism and finding a letter from my at the time girlfriend and being so cruel to me about it that i did not come out of the closet for another decade+. i'm glad the girls in this had a much kinder reaction.
captured the weight every small social interaction has when you're that age, the way every conversation feels like a quick time event with instant ramifications you may not expect. the scene where it's friday night and they get extremely dressed up in hopes of finding plans, despite being 15 and having no friends with cars, acccess to parties/bars, etc and just end up sitting in a diner in their town populated by suburban nuclear families KILLED ME....
some small complaints:
(-) post-fair, the last 60 or so pages do lose some tension/charm/whatever for me... like the spell this had me under went away and couldn't come back. but the ending was good enough for it to turn back around
(-) the font this book is set in is one of my favorite to use in graphic design work, but one of my least favorites for reading anything long form in. it needed to be a bigger size, or a font with more weight to it - i shouldn't be reading a book in daylight, in good lighting, and it hurting my eyes
(-) there are a few over used descriptor terms (most of which i forgot because i was too into this to make my usual notes) that are used WAY too frequently for how short of a book this is.
memories this book stirred up:
1. i had a friend group where our only ties to each other were the 8 layer of mascara photoshoot sessions + the sims + liking twilight. one day, for seemingly no real reason i could detect, my main anchor to this friend group started walking in the halls with a different friend, invited this same friend for a friday night sleepover instead of me, dwindling me out of her life without so much as a conversation. i, as a hyper sensitive autistic teenager who was also a closeted lesbian, reacted Very Normally to this and wrote a deeply heartfelt 3 page letter that was tear stained. i read it out loud to a mutual friend who listened silently, and only said: i think you shouldn't give this to her
2. out trick or treating with a friend (i think my last year doing it, and one of those years where we felt embarrassed and too old once we were out of the house) where we saw the third member of our trio who had claimed she had "family plans" and couldn't go out with us, with another group from school. we walked past them on purpose 8 different times to Send a Message.
3. my mom ripping through my bedroom, ransacking my drawers, on a hunch about the Baby Lesbianism and finding a letter from my at the time girlfriend and being so cruel to me about it that i did not come out of the closet for another decade+. i'm glad the girls in this had a much kinder reaction.
June 22, 2026
Wow! I've never read the teenage experience written so well. Sparkling, tense beyond measure and everything feels important. This book was impossible to put down
June 7, 2026
a title so generational
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
It's actually incredible how Sonia Feldman exactly captured the perils of being a teenage girl. This book was witty, funny, annoying (in the most honest, eye-rolling at the dramatics of teenagers way it can be), and raw. I found it hard to put down once I got into it. A sapphic teen coming of age is exactly what millennial women needed this summer. I grappled with simultaneous feelings of nostalgia and relief to be past that point in my youth. Adulthood sucks, but it's also ok.
I loved the characters! They all felt so human and relatable.
Oh and this book so BADLY made me want to play Sims again. Like do I need to go download it!?
Thank you Net Galley and Penguin Random House for an ARC!
I loved the characters! They all felt so human and relatable.
Oh and this book so BADLY made me want to play Sims again. Like do I need to go download it!?
Thank you Net Galley and Penguin Random House for an ARC!
June 8, 2026
”What was I supposed to do? How do you turn a person into your girlfriend when you’re currently mad at them and ultimately unclear on their feelings for you?”
humiliating and excruciatingly relatable for anyone who’s ever been a little bit in love with someone you shouldn’t be or a friend. Loved!
humiliating and excruciatingly relatable for anyone who’s ever been a little bit in love with someone you shouldn’t be or a friend. Loved!
June 9, 2026
This book is highly nostalgic, but I am probably too old to be nostalgic for it. I think this is probably a really good book for elder Gen Z’s/youngest millennials? Not for me, but I can see how others would enjoy it.
June 12, 2026
“I didn't want to be or act like someone other than myself, but I didn't actually know yet who I was in the context of wanting another person. Desire makes us new to ourselves.”
Wow!! Whew!! Ahh!! This was really really something. I'm amazed at how it makes its complexity feel seamless - namely, that the narrator sounds like an actual, present-tense teenager and, simultaneously, like an adult looking back on their teenage years. It sounds real, it doesn't sound like an adult writer taking on the guise of a teenage voice, and yet it's also the kind of book an adult would want to read! This book takes teenagers seriously and its characters' inner worlds are both legible and compelling as a result. They live in this web of complex social rituals and extreme self-consciousness and, y'know, teenagerishness, and it would be very easy to roll your adult eyes at how much they care about he-said she-said and what this person was wearing to what party but when you're fifteen and becoming yourself for the first time, making and maintaining friendships in what feels like a more adult way for the first time, encountering so much of life for the first time, even the tiny little things matter and you don't have the perspective to feel differently yet.
In a way, this is really a novel of manners and I got just as invested in the strange-to-me world of a Gen Z teen as I would in the strange-to-me world of an Austen novel. Austen novels can seem easy to write off as "just" about marriage and teatime and Girl's Girl could seem easy to write off as "just" about fifteen-year-olds worrying about what their friends' Instagram posts mean but are friendships not the great loves of most peoples' lives?? Do our friends not reflect us back to ourselves both magnifying and clarifying who we are?? Teenagers are not pretend people waiting to be released into the real world that Actually Matters and I love how this book honors that. I love Mina and Eleanor and Margaret and I love their relationships change. I love how atmospheric the book is. You can feel the impending summer thunderstorm hot in the air. I love their different relationships with their moms. I also love how the story revolves around The kids are alright!!
Wow!! Whew!! Ahh!! This was really really something. I'm amazed at how it makes its complexity feel seamless - namely, that the narrator sounds like an actual, present-tense teenager and, simultaneously, like an adult looking back on their teenage years. It sounds real, it doesn't sound like an adult writer taking on the guise of a teenage voice, and yet it's also the kind of book an adult would want to read! This book takes teenagers seriously and its characters' inner worlds are both legible and compelling as a result. They live in this web of complex social rituals and extreme self-consciousness and, y'know, teenagerishness, and it would be very easy to roll your adult eyes at how much they care about he-said she-said and what this person was wearing to what party but when you're fifteen and becoming yourself for the first time, making and maintaining friendships in what feels like a more adult way for the first time, encountering so much of life for the first time, even the tiny little things matter and you don't have the perspective to feel differently yet.
In a way, this is really a novel of manners and I got just as invested in the strange-to-me world of a Gen Z teen as I would in the strange-to-me world of an Austen novel. Austen novels can seem easy to write off as "just" about marriage and teatime and Girl's Girl could seem easy to write off as "just" about fifteen-year-olds worrying about what their friends' Instagram posts mean but are friendships not the great loves of most peoples' lives?? Do our friends not reflect us back to ourselves both magnifying and clarifying who we are?? Teenagers are not pretend people waiting to be released into the real world that Actually Matters and I love how this book honors that. I love Mina and Eleanor and Margaret and I love their relationships change. I love how atmospheric the book is. You can feel the impending summer thunderstorm hot in the air. I love their different relationships with their moms. I also love how the story revolves around The kids are alright!!
June 16, 2026
have no clue how i found the time to finish this book so fast but a queer coming of age does really pull me in. i loved the portrayal of close female friendship and how queerness can sometimes get mixed up in it and make things confusing. these girlies were a little insufferable but who isn’t in high school
June 15, 2026
there is a very, very special kind of magic in this one
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