Single Girls

by John Searles

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

An infectious and utterly charming fictionalization of the iconic Helen Gurley Brown’s early years at the helm of Cosmopolitan, and the intrepid group of women she took under her wing to create one of the most talked about magazines of all time.

In 1965, Helen Gurley Brown, a soft spoken, self-professed “mouseburger,” is fresh off the runaway success of her book Sex and the Single Girl, a revolutionary call to single women urging them not to rush into marriage on anyone’s timeline but their own, and, even more radically, to enjoy their sex lives, gloriously free of shame. Upon the book’s publication, half the country is outraged (her mother, for one, hates it), and the other half will follow her anywhere. Moved by the thousands of letters arriving at her doorstep from readers desperate for advice, she marches from one Manhattan magazine conglomerate to another, looking for a perch from which to dispense her unconventional wisdom. At her last stop, she finally gets her just three issues to turn around the flailing magazine Cosmopolitan.

Helen quickly assembles a team of smart, savvy single girls up to the task. Soon, their lives become the stuff of magazine cover the gorgeous Book Editor’s doomed romance with a man she didn’t know was married—and her bold idea for revenge. The (unofficial!) Sex Editor’s trip to soak in the world’s first champagne glass hot tub, which takes a very wrong turn. The Entertainment Editor’s clash with Joan Crawford and interview with a Park Avenue call girl that leads to unexpected revelations.

Single Girls begins at the dawn of Helen’s storied tenure and journeys back to her youth, envisioning the devastations and people who forged her into a controversial legend. It imagines the way one unsinkable group of women navigated gender roles and workplace power dynamics long before these issues entered the headlines. With dazzling, high-energy prose, it recreates not just a movement, but a one of ambition, reinvention, and the intoxicating thrill of being young when a new world was possible for a single girl if only she was fearless enough to reach out and grab it.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, New York, Audiobook, Historical, Fashion, Book Club

377 pages, Hardcover

Published July 7, 2026

About the author

John Searles is the best-selling author of the novels Her Last Affair, Help for the Haunted, Strange but True and Boy Still Missing.

Hailed as “riveting” by The New York Times and “hypnotic” by Entertainment Weekly, Boy Still Missing, inspired Time magazine to name him a “Person to Watch,” and the New York Daily News to name him a “New Yorker to Watch.” His second novel, Strange but True was praised as “sinister and complex” by Janet Maslin of The New York Times, “extraordinary” by Publishers Weekly, and was named best novel of the year by Salon. John’s most recent novel, Help for the Haunted, was named a Boston Globe Best Crime Novel of the Year, an Entertainment Weekly Top 10 Must List, and won the American Library Association’s Alex Award.

In 2019, Strange But True was adapted for film by the producers of La La Land and released in theaters nationwide by Lionsgate. Now streaming on Netflix and Amazon Prime, the film stars the award-winning ensemble cast of Amy Ryan, Greg Kinnear, Brian Cox, Blythe Danner, Nick Robinson and Margaret Qualley. The movie was praised as “suspenseful and haunting” by The Hollywood Reporter and “a twisty tale of tragic secrets” by the Los Angeles Times.

John has appeared regularly on morning programs like NBC’s Today Show, CBS This Morning, Live! With Regis & Kelly, NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross and CNN to discuss his books.

The longtime books editor of Cosmopolitan, John also served as the magazine’s brand director, executive editor, and editor-at-large. His personal and travel essays, book and restaurant reviews have been published in the New York Times, Washington Post and numerous other magazines, newspapers and websites. He has a master's degree in creative writing from New York University and lives in New York.

Reviews

[Marisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a fun romp through the pages of a book about the life of an icon . I always wanted to write for a magazine and Searles brings this experience to life. I really enjoyed this novel!

[Gabby Nuñez · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 but I’ll round up⭐️ thank you to net galley & the publisher for this early arc! it was for sure a long read and the timeline got a little confusing as it jumped around through time but it was an enjoyable read! I had seen the old Hollywood film Sex & The Single Girl before but who knew the force of a woman behind it was also in charge of Cosmo magazine? iconic really!

[Melanie Belson (melanielovesbooks) · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.25

Cosmo was one of those magazines every young teen snuck and read and then every older teen openly read so when I had the chance to read this I jumped at it. I loved the stories of the side mc's (the single girls) and the whole 60's and 70's atmosphere, however it reads slow and you are constantly hoping for a pick up towards the middle. That doesn't make it bad it just leaves you wishing for a bit more. Overall this was a fun jump back in time.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for access to an e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

[Dede · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought this book was okay. I felt bored throughout the book. I don't know if I would recommend this book. Some people may enjoy it and I thought I would because it follows the single girls in the actor world.

[Myndi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve been in quite the reading slump which for me has been super sad. Reading is basically my entire personality so it’s concerning when I’m not reading. However, I started reading an ARC of Single Girls by John Searles (thank you NetGalley and HarperCollins!) and I loved it.

It was incredibly interesting reading about Helen Gurley Brown and the other editors. Yes the book is based on a true story and took liberties with some of the stories but it was still wonderfully written, and the characters were great. I love the way the story was written. The past and present would flow so beautifully. It was easy to jump from one to the other, and it gave clues as to what was going on. Not revealing the entire story, which I really liked. Helen’s story was split up throughout the book and we learned more and more about her slowly. I loved all the things we would find out about her and her journey, especially when we found out about “the number.”

In the book it was mentioned that feminists had an issue with Cosmo and the stories they shared, but I think it helped move the movement along. They fought for women just as much as traditional feminists did. Cosmo taught women to be proud of themselves and enjoy the journey of being single. The magazine helped show women that there was more than just one path for them. Overall, I really enjoyed the book and the way it was written, and I look forward to reading more of John Searles books and also the books he mentioned in his author’s note.

[Maddie Earl · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you Netgalley for this ARC.

This book started off strong and then and then around the middle it started to drag, which caused me to have to take a break from reading for a few weeks. I am not quite a fan of the authors writing style where attempts to be playful and witty came off as unfinished thoughts and confusing plot points.

I love the historical fiction aspects of the book, set in the fashion industry surrounding Helen Gurley Brown as the former editor in chief of Cosmo. I think the book did a good job of addressing gender and in part, racial issues, surrounding the fashion industry and women’s rights in general during the 60s and 70s.

I absolutely loved all the “single girls” and their stories, I think that was the strongest part of the book! Helen, despite being the MC felt distant and though the book jumps back and forth between her present day and childhood, she still felt very surface level.

Overall the women are well-written, and Helen herself is a resilient character for sure but the other girls’ stories (which only account for about 1/3 of the book) remain the best part of the novel for me. The ending is a full circle resolution and wrapped the book up nicely.

[MicheleReader · Rating 4.25 out of 5]

By 1965, Helen Gurley Brown had gone from a successful advertising copywriter to an author. Her book Sex and the Single Girl was a groundbreaking hit, speaking to legions of single women. Helen’s next goal was to launch a magazine for these same women, covering topics that had never been addressed before. Instead of getting the go ahead for her new magazine, she was given three issues to revitalize the struggling Cosmopolitan magazine. The talented “Mrs. Brown” assembled an all-female team to bring her vision to life. The rest is publishing history.

John Searles, widely known for his thrillers, has written a highly entertaining fictional account of Helen Gurley Brown's life in Single Girls. It’s filled with nostalgia and snappy dialogue, along with numerous touching stories about Brown’s early years and the challenges of the women she employed to build the magazine. How can you resist a book that includes the line from Gypsy, “Have an egg roll, Mr. Goldstone.” (IYKYK.) Searles worked for Cosmopolitan for over twenty years. Perhaps one day he will share his own tales from the magazine.

Many thanks to Mariner Books for the advance.

4.25 stars.

Review posted on MicheleReader.com.

 

[Maria Adela Cardenas · Rating 1 out of 5]

This might be the most boring book I’ve ever read

[Lianne (Old Lady Podcast) · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an interesting tale of Helen Gurley Brown and Cosmo. I especially enjoyed the author's notes at the end about how he had the privilege of working with her and getting to know her.

[Lorraine Lai · Rating 3 out of 5]

Single Girls had an interesting premise and a few genuinely funny moments that kept me listening, but overall it wasn’t quite the right fit for me.

The strongest parts were the character interactions and bits of humor, which helped bring the story to life. I had a hard time staying engaged and becoming immersed in the story.

I’m glad I listened to it, and I think readers who enjoy historical fiction with a strong emphasis on the era and its social context may appreciate it more than I did. For me, it landed at a solid 3 stars.

Thank you NetGalley for the audiobook ARC in exchange for an honesty review.

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I Knew Cosmo. I Didn’t Know Helen. ⭐️

I grew up reading Cosmopolitan magazine and absolutely loved it—the articles about being a single girl, being independent and being your own woman, women’s health and sexuality, fashion, relationships, and the cultural and social issues of the day. And I especially remember looking forward to that December issue with the Bedside Astrologer! ✨

Yet for as much as I read and loved Cosmo, I honestly knew very little about the woman who made the magazine what it became: Helen Gurley Brown. That was what made Single Girls so fascinating to me.

I will admit that at first I wrestled a little with how to read and process this book. Helen Gurley Brown was a very real person. Her husband was real. Cosmopolitan was obviously real. But Single Girls is a novel—not a biography or traditional historical fiction—and it blends real people, events and Cosmo history with fictional characters and imagined scenes. Once I found the right lens through which to read it—as a dramatization of Helen’s life and the remarkable transformation of Cosmopolitan—I was completely drawn in.

What especially fascinated me was seeing just how groundbreaking Cosmo was at the time. It spoke directly to women—particularly single women—about independence, careers, sex, relationships, fashion and their own lives in a way other magazines simply weren’t. And behind it was Helen Gurley Brown, leading a team of women and turning Cosmopolitan into an enormous success at a time when publishing was overwhelmingly dominated by men. Knowing what Cosmo eventually became made watching those beginnings unfold even more remarkable.

The Author’s Note at the end added another layer of appreciation for me because it helped me better understand how Single Girls came to be, what was rooted in reality, and where Searles used fiction to bring Helen and the world of Cosmo to life. John Searles began his career in the ’90s at Cosmopolitan, initially unsure it was even where he wanted to be—he wanted to write books. His mother suggested he give the job two weeks. Those two weeks turned into 22 years.

During that time, Searles became immersed in the culture and history of Cosmo, read its back issues, and was fortunate to work with Helen during the later years of her career. The idea of writing about Helen and the world of Cosmopolitan stayed with him for years and ultimately became Single Girls. Knowing that history made the novel feel almost like a love letter to Helen and to Cosmo. ❤️ The Author’s Note also helped clarify what was rooted in reality and where Searles used fiction to bring that world to life.

And then there was the audiobook! Amy Ryan did a terrific job narrating. I listened to the entire book thinking, Why does that name sound familiar? Who is Amy Ryan? Then I heard the interview with Ryan and Searles at the end and thought, Oh my God—of course I know Amy Ryan! She was Holly on The Office! 😂 I loved her on The Office, and I loved her narration here.

This was one of those books that entertained me while also leaving me feeling like I had learned something—and I always love that. Although it’s fiction, so much is grounded in real people, real history and the evolution of Cosmopolitan. I came away with a much greater appreciation for Helen Gurley Brown and what she accomplished, and I’m grateful John Searles decided that Helen’s story—and Cosmo’s story—was one worth telling.

For a magazine that was such a cherished part of my younger years, this felt like a wonderful way to finally learn about the remarkable woman behind it. Five stars. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

[Madison Warner Fairbanks · Rating 4 out of 5]

Single Girls by John Searles
Fiction.
A fictionalized life story of Helen Gurley Brown. She is best known for writing Sex and the Single Girl in the 1960’s and running the Cosmopolitan magazine for thirty years. The author of this story worked at the magazine for twenty years and brings his humor, style and creativity to this charming and eye opening novel.
The story includes the women behind the scenes, their lives and feelings, women’s rights, their loves, and their struggles in the changing times.
It’s fiction but based on the limits of the 60’s time periods with brief references to Helen around the age of her father’s accident.

Time changes so much. It brought back some memories but more importantly, reminded me to be grateful for those that fought for the rights women in the US have now.
The story is entertaining and just a tinge sad.
Authors notes at the end are extensive and add to the historical significance of the time.

[Lisa Welch · Rating 3 out of 5]

I will preface this review with the fact that I listened to this on audio, and I may possibly have rated it higher if I had read it in print. I love reading books set in this time period (and books about HGB in particular), and I love when those books feature so much feminine power (and how hard women had to fight to overcome sexism to get ahead). I think this book had the potential to be rated higher with stronger editing that would have tightened up the plot lines and character arcs. I enjoyed the backstories of the women HGB hired, but they were interspersed in a way that did not make the story flow, and it took the reader out of the story (and way more were interspersed at the beginning of the book). The timelines shifted in unpredictable ways and often took a couple minutes to regain your sense of the timeline. I also felt so much was left unresolved at the end. Although I enjoyed aspects of this one, I do think there are better books out there about this time period.

[Kim Novak (The Reading Rx) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Single Girls was a fabulously fun read that takes you through a fictionalized account of Helen Gurley Brown's life from childhood through her time a Cosmopolitan. She was quite the pistol and made many shockwaves for her time. While historical in nature, the book was full of humor and pop culture and all the things that made my mom's coming of age years interesting. I just wish I could have had the opportunity to discuss this book with her like we did many others over the years.

I was surprised this book was written by a man, but after reading the author's note and listening to the interview between John Searles and the audiobook narrator Amy Ryan, it totally makes sense, and he was perfect to write her story. I also took a listen to the audiobook and found the narration to be fun and engaging and with interesting vocal characterizations.

Thank you to Mariner Books and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this ARC.

[Sherrie Howey · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fictional book about the life of Helen Gurley Brown and consists of many events which took place in real life. The author worked for Helen Gurley Brown for many years so his inside experience at Cosmopolitan makes it difficult to interesting and informative.
I loved Helen’s determination to make Cosmopolitan magazine a success and all of the intriguing women she hired. This was such a brave group of women willing to overcome the many obstacles they encountered. Loved how female empowerment was evident throughout the book and this is a must read book!

[Danni · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very fun, quirky read about Helen Gurley Brown, a spunky woman who revived Cosmopolitan magazine from a dying brand to a progressive, sex-positive mag for women. It was a fun dive into the 1960s — showing serious issues of the time (not just women's rights, but also issues of race and sexuality) without being preachy.

Also a truly stunning opener: Helen's father died when she was young in an elevator accident. Literally after the first chapter I found this unputdownable!

[Lindsey Rebholz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Feeling like the luckiest girl in the world for picking this book up and taking it home with me. I loved everything about it. John’s writing and story telling ability is captivating, his characters are real, honest, and truly lovable x100. Helen Gurly Brown, what an icon you are! This is the perfect book to read for all pussycats everywhere! 5 stars🤩🤩

[Becky · Rating 4 out of 5]

I felt that this book was a little too long and difficult to hold my attention after a while. It was really good at first and then a little boring for a while. I had only heard the name of Helen Gourley Brown when growing up so it was interesting to read about her life though and how she stood up for women in the workplace and in general.

[Sheila Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. It is a novel based on Helen Gurley Brown and her life story. John Searles did a great job bringing this ground breaking woman's story a great read. The book re-ignited my interest in this time period and I marveled at the progress women have made to change their status. It is still has room to improve.

[Kathy (Bermudaonion) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Helen Gurley Brown lost her father when she was young and his death haunted her all of her life. She grew up determined and driven and is known for her role in starting Cosmpolitan magazine. In SINGLE GIRLS, John Searles imagines her life and what the early days at the magazine were like.

I was excited to read SINGLE GIRLS because I remember how revolutionary Cosmpolitan was. I was expecting to learn more about Gurley Brown but the focus really isn’t on her and her vision. I will admit the book dragged for me. I think readers who want to learn more about the late 60s culture and attitudes might enjoy it more than I did.

[Rina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Didn't think I'd enjoy as I'm not one for reading about the famous et al, but I very much enjoyed John Searles's fictional iteration of Helen Gurley Brown. It helped that I remember and admired her.

[Sheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was a pleasant surprise. I put it on hold from someone's recommendation, but I don't remember who that was. This fictionalized story of Helen Gurley Brown was great fun. Made me want more. Definitely recommend.

[Sherrie · Rating 4 out of 5]

My latest read - historical fiction about the rise of Cosmopolitan Magazine and the women behind it in the 1960s. Narrated by Amy Ryan, this book gives me the Mad Men vibe, but with powerful women, led by editor in chief Helen Gurley Brown.

[Amy Storey · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a magical confection and tribute to a groundbreaking woman with a little known—but important—backstory! Thank you to John Searles for a beautiful and fun read. And thank you to the publisher for a preview on NetGalley.

[Kristi · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this look into the start of Cosmo magazine! Helen was an amazing woman, a pioneer. The vocabulary in this book was reason enough to read it! A felicitous display of the English language!

[Molly Hathorne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Perfect book for fans of Paige Desorbo and Sex and the City

[Teresa A. Mauk · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book and learn more about Helen Gurley Brown at the same time. While readable, the author takes a lot of license in imagining Helen's life, thoughts, and conversations.

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

SINGLE GIRLS
BY: JOHN SEARLES

This wonderful Author, John Searles, has written several books that I have read, and loved going back longer than his tenure working with this utterly, Iconic trailblazing fascinating, but also courageous Woman, Helen Gurley Brown. I couldn't pass up the opportunity to gain more insight into what shaped her to be so ahead of her time, as well as influences, and it is obvious that she had an intriguing, and extraordinarily profound earlier life that must have been filled with an exceptional amount of interesting questions that piqued my curiosity that I hoped this fictional novel had like all historical fiction there are factual aspects that even though they might be a smaller in scope since this is how we who read historical fiction there are always gems that we are able to add that makes the genre entertaining and fun. I thought it might be inspirational enough that might motivate me to do my own further inquiries. I just knew that I have faith in this author that regardless of whatever he decided to be his own discretion, and that I always learn something but since I am not giving spoilers in my review I think that the synopsis has a lot of things that give you an idea of that how her confidence didn't just develop without a doubt it is clear that she had intelligence but we already know that in 1965, was not without what I know there are usually our earlier experiences in which her incredible self belief is not without having others who we connected with that are vital to how I know made me interested since the synopsis described that it includes her story circles back to her origins that I know was whether or not were real or imagined that there are a basis that a colleague who is for twenty- three years involved in helping Cosmopolitan so successful was bound to have more insight that it is why I chose to read this. John is qualified to be an trusted gifted, intelligent author that is in his own right a worthwhile novel that he can recreate this Woman's background using creative licence with his imagination is no different than any other author who in this genre does exactly what most who I have read enough novels to know that I get invested in the characters and storytelling to only be disappointed when I very much think that is the crucially determining the more details that anyone who has read this genre that as readers we have expected the writer who gives you more clarity gets more likely to be in my opinion that has some impact on what determines how I have mixed feelings about this genre not being as once a favorite but not except three authors and four with John that I will continue to read because one thing I do know is that I think is that any author of this genre that is worth investing my time and energy will realize that they need to devote their skills towards their Author's Note with making it just as extensive with as well thought out care towards detailed clarification is to be that is the final chance that I decide how I will be remembering whether to decide to never read that author again, or if I will have to read their next book since that is why I have not made this genre a one that I used to love but not as likely to read since I can read magical realism if it is blended with beautiful life applicable powerful realistic passages but my real passion is Literary Fiction or character driven general fiction. I did buy a historical fiction novel that and a couple of historical fiction books that about events and I totally loved one that was about Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner life long emotionally powerful novel that I was just thinking about how I remembered a good friend who does this same type of reviewing who I admire her telling me that she doesn't read historical fiction based on real people since I still do as long as the author has researched their people and stick to the factual record as much as possible but the storytelling has to be well written and I thought of how noble and respectful my friend is that shows empathy and that made me respect John Searles with his choosing to fictionalize Helen Gurley Brown's life, and I of course, factored into his Stunning Author's Note which I think is why I determined that that says a lot about why I can say is still how I can tell a lot about an Author by in two instances two historical novels were so wonderful that I think are quite successful since I am always buying books so I read those same books that were from what I hate about this genre is that I loved the books that were about People that are both actually a third one that I am saying how much they were worthy of 100 star ratings that two are still selling well but when one of the authors is more widely read but the biggest reason why there are two that I will continue to read because they are just two that I will refuse to give up even though the other two were highly greater experiences that I was led to believe were as factual as can be is that I get attached to the characters and is why I can love how wonderful I thought I loved it to learn that with one that is an instant bestselling historical fiction writer that I really loved the characters and I won't be reading ever again because I don't like the fact that the Author's Note was not thought out, just short that she wrote a dual timeline novel that was about two Women that her Author's Note ruined the whole novel that there was no empathy towards the reader that spoke volumes of how I felt that I thought never again will I read a book by a historical fiction bestselling author who the Note gave me how I thought was short that made too many things that were not needed to make the narrative flow that I might have overlooked if she explained why she invented things that I thought what a waste of my time that I don't want to find out that after I thought at least in this case I had known up front that it was fictionalized so I have the option to pass on reading it which I still thought that combined with the Author's Note, and it was not screaming I am entitled to take things that are not factual and this was too often done that did involve creative licence about real people that I trusted as a historical fiction writer who I hate to find out that my favorite character was fictional in the Author's Note especially when I love fiction, but I want a thoughtful Author's Note that is not signaling that it comes across as I am an instant bestselling Author who is known as historical fiction that I can insert things that are about famous people who can lead me to believe I'm learning something new, and I do not have to explain why I don't write as much unnecessary content because I am too lazy to do the research because I write historical fiction that I churn out two or more books a year and I care about sales not to mention that I still remember that and I don't trust her. I don't like how I felt and I read because I do like to read fiction since I believe I learn a lot in completely fictional books that I read because I recognize that as long as I am not tricked I felt that I have still impressed by almost any genre and I still think I learned about a great deal about Helen Gurley Brown that I didn't know, and so much more. I thought this was an engaging novel which I devoured by an experienced writer that I loved his creativity and his content enough that this was an easy five stars to which I think his Author's Note was I am emphasizing that twice in this review so you will find is the perfection that enhances the novel. would have such empowerment of Women, but also learn more about Helen Gurley Brown since as a young teenager up until now I knew very little about the fact that she was able to turn the magazine Cosmopolitan into making it the nostalgic success it became. I remember buying a copy for myself every month until I can't remember when or why I think I just outgrew it. Among others I remember how I enjoyed it each month and how beautiful the covers were with the way it was just always fun to automatically buy it. I think I just got them and the fact that she was responsible from saving a floundering staple as early as the 1960's before I was born I am not sure but I don't think Women were even issued credit cards back then or so many things that took place makes the era itself worth reading this historical fiction book about her which it is a work of fiction, but you still learn about her and it contains a charming concept that made this a highly intoxicating and very engrossing way to think how maybe she can be found in biographies that give you more comprehensive just the facts Mam (no pun intended.) etc. I think that it just dawned on me to realize that this isn't something I looked into, yet. I think who better to have written this novelized version than John Searles who worked with her at the very same magazine who for at least twenty three years, but he deserves a lot of admiration for what he accomplished making this novel as dazzling. and reminding us how things have for the most part improved besides the overturning of Roe V. Wade even though I am not going to get all Political since I believe for one thing I don't like talking about Politics and it is just so not my place to ruin the great many uplifting attributes that this historical fiction still is a great reading experience and this is just even though the 1960's was a time that many things that were many great changes of a lot more issues were starting to be have gained traction it still was a kinder and gentle time that things like newspapers, and milkmen who brought it to you this was also a very well written Author's Note that this is a gem that I loved this novel, and I'm so sure that this is already going to be available now already, this was in my opinion a lot to offer by a great Writer. I ended up writing a much different, and much longer review that was not my intention since I am just wanting to thank everybody who was thoughtful enough to market this as being up front about this being a fictionalized version since I still understand that there are certain things that this author is significantly full of integrity who is one that I have thought moved up the ladder at Cosmopolitan who gives two biographies that did do his research to which I have been to many Author events of John's Searles friend Chris Bohjalian who is so humble also who I still have his novel "The Amateur," that is hopefully going to be one that Published this month that I am looking forward to, as well. I think that there was much research done here that I loved one of John's Author friends who I loved her novel that came out earlier this year by Christina Baker Kline who gets a thank you in the end. This was something that I thought was very well written and by how he thoughtfully was wanting to write this for quite some time you can tell that his affection for HGB was one of respect and that he really did a brilliant job. I really enjoyed this and highly recommend it.

Publication Date: July 7, 2026

Thank you to Net Galley, John Searles, and Mariner Books for generously providing me with my Sparkling ARC in exchange for a fair and honest review. All opinions are entirely my own, as always.

#SingleGirls #JohnSearles #MarinerBooks #NetGalley

[Skip Ferderber · Rating 3 out of 5]

I pondered long and hard about how to review “Single Girls,” a fictionalized version of Helen Gurley Brown’s early days as editor of Cosmopolitan. It’s a clever well-written book, telling the faux origins of Helen’s outsized influence on women, publishing, culture and much more through the pages of Cosmo.

Beginning with her sensational first book, “Sex and the Single Girl,” the first major best seller who placed women’s sexual desires, interests, and peculiarities on an equal level with men, a counterweight to the blatant sexism of the era, Helen jammed the floodgates wide open with her editorship of “Cosmopolitan” for more than 30 years. She all but rewrote the book, both literally and in the magazine about how women looked, talked about themselves, how they related to both women and men, felt about themselves physically, sexually, socially, politically.

Perhaps her core message was about not being afraid to be a fully ambitious, sexual and independent woman, unafraid to defy the stereotype of what a woman “should be” in that difficult restrictive world for women a half-century ago. (And still festers today as well.)

Even when management kicked her upstairs, replacing her at the U.S. version of the magazine, she continued running Cosmo’s European editions virtually until her death in 2012. A remarkable woman, a remarkable run.

So why my hesitation about how to review this book? The author spent 17 of his 23 years at the magazine with her. I spent only two days with her in 1964 as her Los Angeles publicist for her follow-up book, “Sex and the Office.” It still became a memorable experience for me at 23, driving one of the world’s most famous women to multiple press engagements, 8 to 10 a day, both of us squeezed into my white two-door Volkswagen with Joan Didion jammed into the back seat writing what became one of Didion’s celebrated magazine articles, a profile on Helen published in 1965 under the title “Bosses Make Lousy Lovers” in the Saturday Evening Post.

(Briefly mentioned in the article was a swipe at an overeager PR guy named “Skip Ferderber” whose chief contribution to the tour, and the article, was saying the word “Great!” to virtually every comment Helen threw my way. ”Great,” said Skip Ferderber” I was pinned like a butterfly in a display case.)

Our relationship during those few days was professional. No undertones. I was not unaccustomed to some of my female authors finding me, for modesty’s sake, interesting. Not Helen. And yet she came across as genuinely fond of me, even responding for years afterwards about our days together driving around in my “ white angel,” her reference to my battered VW, her unique ability to connect with people evident even back then as we embarked on our relentless media bookings from L.A to Palm Springs in a car with no air conditioning, no coffee cup holder, lousy springs. And yet, not a complaint from her, only her unshakable drive to book every interview I could grab no matter how exhausted she was (or me for that matter.)

My experience with her was pre-Cosmo.

So why all this in reviewing “Single Girls”? Because one thing I know was how completely the author captured Helen’s voice. It was low, quiet, soft, but with an unmistakable determined persuasive quality, an authority that she mastered, a seductive sound that stays with me all these years.

By contrast, the author started working with Helen in 1997 as a young writer in her 30th year at Cosmo, and stayed working at the magazine through her death and then for several more years. In an author's note, he describes his relationship with her as that of a friend.

So, yes, I can vouch for the authenticity of Helen’s voice and drive. And many of the names and events of the times in the book are real. I checked. But what distresses me is his lack of focus on the Helen he knew. Even though the book is overwhelmed with events from her past (real or imagined), he never gets close to the enigma she really was, the one I saw years before, despite decades of knowing and working for her to call on.

While there are endless portraits in the book of (fictional) women who worked for her, composites drawn from whatever sources he used, he never came close to portraying the real driven, insanely focused Helen who drove the staff underneath her with a relentless focus on quality, meticulous writing standards, living the Cosmo life, and promoting a world view that every woman who read Cosmo should or could be her. The self-described unattractive mouseburger became who she dreamed she could be, exercising that personal and professional power over the women who worked for her, and taking the magazine she transformed into the powerhouse it still remains as a megaphone for her distinctive voice.

And yet the book avoids that closeup, frittering away a far greater portrait of her in favor of stories meant to interpret the lives and points of view of that ‘60s generation. Knowing her, apparently well, he was in a position to tell us a richer story of the Helen that I knew briefly. What could have been a roman a clef instead of a cozy retelling of a history that has already been covered in at least two other full length biographies was I believe the waste of a great opportunity.

His relentless plowing of her family life, her difficult relationships with her mother and sisters, the traumatic death of her father . . . was that fantasy, a “reimagining” or did Helen confide herself to him in such detail? Her life with husband David Brown, the movie producer who is often credited with “inventing” the Helen the world knows by being in effect her co-editor on “Sex and the Single Girl” is similarly portrayed. Did Helen unburden herself to the author about her life with him or is this too fiction?

A portrait of her in her later years, at the top of her powers, and what happened when that great power was all but taken from her by the corporation she worked for, then the passing of her beloved husband after 50 years of marriage and her own passing two years later, all of which he witnessed, would have been of far greater interest to me.

Perhaps I am being unfair. He wrote the book he wrote. It’s interesting. It’s fun. It’s dishy. But what a book he could have written. In my opinion, it would have been eminently more worth reading than the book he wrote.

[Demetri Papadimitropoulos · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are books that arrive with their own lighting – a calibrated glow that flatters, forgives, sells. And then there are books that understand lighting as a kind of moral problem: who gets seen, who gets staged, who gets cut out of the frame, who learns to live anyway. “Single Girls,” John Searles’s buoyant, bruised, deliberately glossy novel about Helen Gurley Brown’s ascendance at “Cosmopolitan” in the late 1960s, belongs to the second category. It knows how to shimmer. It also knows how to haunt.

Searles is a novelist with an unusually magazine-ready set of gifts: he writes with velocity, with a talent for the scene that ends on the perfect turn, with a fondness for the telling list and the propulsive detail. In “Single Girls,” those gifts aren’t pasted on as period lacquer. They are the engine of the book’s argument. The sentences move like a staff meeting moves when the editor-in-chief has a headache and a deadline and a vision – when the talk is bright, fast, defensive, flirtatious, and sharper than it sounds. The prose is social. It listens. It interrupts. It gives everyone a line. And underneath that bustling surface, it is doing something more ambitious than a workplace romp: it is asking what it costs to build a self out of appetite and willpower, and what it costs to keep the machinery running once you’ve built it.

The novel’s Helen is introduced in the full theater of her mythology: a woman who can walk into a Hearst office dressed like a dare and make men who own rooms feel, if not fear, then at least a kind of uncertainty – the sense that the old rules are still the rules, but someone is rewriting them in the margins. Helen’s voice, full of pet names and practiced jokes (“pussycat,” “mouseburger”), can read at first like pure performance: an act that keeps the room light enough that no one notices the knife.

But Searles understands performance as a survival technology. Helen is funny because she has to be. She is relentless because she is scared. She is seductive because seduction is one of the few currencies women are allowed to mint for themselves, and she intends to spend hers on power, not on gratitude. If she seems sometimes to hover between saint and scold, Searles has the good sense to let that tension stand. A woman can be both: radiant to the women she lifts and ruthless to the women she thinks she cannot afford to be slowed by. The book’s moral intelligence lives in this refusal to make Helen easy.

“Single Girls” is set at that strange hinge between decades when the future was already arriving, but the past still owned the building. New York is cold, crowded, loud with taxis and gossip and ambition. Inside “Cosmo,” Searles gives us an editorial staff that feels, in its texture and friction, like an actual workplace rather than a stitched-together sisterhood. There is Liz, a gossip columnist-in-the-making with a reporter’s appetite and a streetwise sentimentality she pretends not to have. There is Myrna, whose frankness about sex can be either liberation or armor depending on the room. There is Eugenia, the fashion editor with a vision for what a cover can risk. There is Angela, who carries a private history so heavy it changes the way she holds her body at her desk. There is Belinda Sue, the books editor, who is both the most literary person in the room and the most quietly ferocious.

Searles gives these women distinct rhythms, distinct hungers. He also gives them a shared predicament: they are producing a magazine that will be mocked by people who never had to make such compromises to survive. They are making “Cosmopolitan,” yes – but they are also making themselves legible inside a system that profits from their legibility. The novel is alert to the way “empowerment” can be marketed, monetized, emptied out, and sold back to the people it claimed to serve. That alertness is what keeps the book from dissolving into nostalgia.

The magazine’s cover lines are one of the novel’s great inventions, even when they are drawn from history: they function like a chorus, a comedic drumbeat, and a document of desire. “How to Give Your Cat a Pill.” “The Bugaboo of Male Impotence.” “A Career Girl Tells About Her Abortion.” “The Lesbian Experience.” “Menstruation – Finally, What’s Really True and What Isn’t.” The sheer range is the point. The magazine is both ridiculous and radical; it is doing feminism with a straight face and a wink, often in the same paragraph. In Searles’s telling, the cover line becomes a kind of cultural fossil: it preserves a moment’s anxieties, fantasies, and blind spots in a single bright phrase. Reading them now, you can feel the familiar contemporary flinch – the way our own era’s language will one day look equally confident and equally strange.

This is one of the book’s quiet current-event resonances: the sense that the battles around women’s bodies and women’s work do not progress in a clean line. They loop. They relapse. They rebrand. “Single Girls” takes place in a world where a woman’s ability to control her reproduction is treated as scandalous content for the magazine rather than basic civic reality. The novel never needs to make a speech about our present to make you think about it. It simply shows you how precarious “progress” feels when it lives inside the everyday: in office policy, in a paycheck, in who gets invited to the party, in who must keep smiling anyway.

Searles’s best scenes are the ones in which the personal and the political collide in something as small as an invitation printed on nice paper. Late in the book, after “Cosmo” has become a “beautiful beast of a sales report,” Helen discovers that the Hearst men are holding a celebration – “strictly stag.” No women allowed. Not Helen, not the women who did the work, not the staff who made the magazine’s success a fact rather than a fantasy. It is a scene written with comic bite – Helen sweeping into “Popular Mechanics,” praising basement waterproofing with a sweetness that is, obviously, venom – but it is also written with a deeper understanding of the way exclusion operates. It is not only cruel; it is strategic. It reminds the women who runs the room that she is still, officially, not supposed to be there.

And because Searles is a novelist, not a pamphleteer, he makes that exclusion land not as a thesis but as a bruise. Helen does not become a symbol; she becomes a person whose old vow not to bring emotions into work is revealed as both impossible and, in its own way, tragic. When she looks at the wall of fifty-six covers she has overseen, she is not only admiring her output. She is trying to locate herself in the work. She is trying to convince herself that what she has made will outlast the contempt that surrounds it.

The book’s emotional architecture eventually leads us to the place Helen spends her life trying not to return to: the elevator in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1932, where her father dies in a catastrophic accident. Searles treats the trauma with restraint and, crucially, with an understanding of how trauma repeats. He makes the elevator not only a literal site of horror but a symbolic one: a box of controlled ascent and descent, a mechanism built on trust, a place where your body is forced to surrender agency. The elevator becomes the novel’s central metaphor for ambition itself – the promise of going up, the terror of losing control, the endless recalibration of fear.

In the present-day elevator scene at Hearst, the lights go out after a New Year’s Eve celebration. The staff is trapped between floors. Helen’s voice begins to fracture. The book’s tone, which has been moving with cocktail-bubble speed, suddenly slows into something more intimate and strange: memory, guilt, the mind’s insistence on replay. The novel allows itself, here, a near-magical turn: a revised memory, a conversation with the dead, an imagined permission. This is the book’s biggest risk, stylistically and emotionally. It could have read as a sentimental bow. Instead, because Searles has threaded the candy motif through the novel with such discipline – Helen’s refusal to eat candy for decades, her belief that appetite is culpability, her conversion of guilt into work – the scene feels earned. The “liberation” Helen experiences is not grand. It is specific: a piece of candy in her mouth. The body doing what it has been afraid to do. The mind letting go of the story it has used to punish itself.

This is, perhaps, the novel’s most bracing psychological insight: the way guilt can become an identity, a job, a religion. Helen has built an entire life out of proving she deserved to survive. She has turned survival into productivity. She has made herself indispensable as a way of avoiding grief. When she finally allows herself a sweetness she has denied, it registers as more than a plot point. It registers as a reorganization of the self. She stops treating pleasure as evidence against her.

Even in that climactic moment, Searles does not let the novel become solemn. He understands that, for Helen and for many of the women around her, humor is not decoration; it is the only language that can carry the weight. The book is filled with lines that are funny in the way real people are funny when they are trying not to fall apart. There are jokes about hairpieces, diets, terrible promotional gifts, “glitzy” parties and “drippy-dips” in Personnel. There are conversations that sound like girlfriends and colleagues and competitors all at once – women who love each other, and who also want something from each other, and who also know the world will be quicker to forgive their male peers.

If there is a weakness in “Single Girls,” it is related to that same strength. The novel’s delight in voice and banter can sometimes tip a character toward archetype – the wisecracking one, the flamboyant one, the anxious one. The best scenes correct for this by revealing the ache behind the persona, especially for Angela and for Helen. But there are moments where the women speak with a unison that feels slightly too polished, slightly too on-message. It is one thing for a magazine staff to share a worldview; it is another for them to sound, occasionally, like an ensemble designed to deliver the decade’s key arguments in the form of witty dialogue. The book is at its most powerful when it trusts conflict more than consensus.

Still, those are the kinds of flaws a lively book earns. “Single Girls” is not timid. It believes, like its heroine, in going too far rather than not far enough. It is a novel that understands the pleasures of a “Cosmo” voice – the glitter, the tease, the confidence – and it uses those pleasures to smuggle in grief, history, and a complicated argument about what liberation looked like in a world that insisted women remain grateful for their cages.

In its cultural register, the book belongs to that lineage of stories about women making a life inside a system built for men, where the work is both a ladder and a trap. If you think of the sly corporate comedy of “The Devil Wears Prada,” the smoky gender politics of “Mad Men,” or even the bright-bitter performance of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” you can feel the neighborhood “Single Girls” lives in. But Searles’s book has a different aim than satire and a different tenderness than nostalgia. It is less interested in punishing the era for its hypocrisies than in asking what those hypocrisies did to the people who had to navigate them daily.

And in its most overtly literary move, “Single Girls” finally turns toward the ephemerality of the medium it celebrates. Magazines, the characters observe, are rarely reread the way books are reread. They are dated quickly. They are thrown out. They are forgotten. Which raises the darker question: if the artifacts vanish, do the people vanish too? The novel itself becomes an answer – an attempt to rescue the women behind the masthead from the cultural shredder, to give them back interiority, to make their names mean something again. It is a generous project, even when it is cheeky. It is, in the deepest sense, an act of attention.

Searles also understands that attention is the one resource that cannot be faked. The book’s final pages widen outward – into the noise of the city, the chorus of “single girls,” the insistence that to hear what women have been saying for decades, you have to stop turning away. This is not a tidy moral. It is a dare, delivered with a smile.

A reader looking for a simple verdict on Helen Gurley Brown will not find it here – and that is the point. “Single Girls” is, among other things, a novel about how women are asked to be legible and lovable at the same time, and how impossible that bargain is. Helen is both admirable and exasperating. She is a feminist and a brand and a person. She is a woman who wants women to have more – more money, more sex, more pleasure, more choices – and who also reproduces the era’s hierarchies even as she tries to outsmart them. The novel does not absolve her. It also does not condemn her. It treats her as what she was: a complicated creature of appetite and fear.

That complexity is why the book works. It is why the period detail does not feel like costume. It is why the humor does not feel like frosting. And it is why the elevator, in the end, is not just a metaphor for career – up, down, stuck, released – but a metaphor for memory itself, the way it traps you until you learn a new story to tell.

“Single Girls” is a stylish, emotionally serious novel about the labor of becoming – about the ways women invent themselves in rooms that were not built for them, and about the private price of that invention. If the book occasionally shines its spotlight a little too brightly on its own themes, it is still hard not to admire its nerve, its tenderness, its insistence on pleasure as a form of truth.

My rating: 82/100.