Take What You Can

by Naima Coster

"Take What You Can is so brilliantly, unbelievably good I have a burning in my heart.... Love is utterly bewildering, and nobody writes about it better than Naima Coster."—Catherine Newman, New York Times bestselling author of Sandwich

From the New York Times bestselling author of What’s Mine and Yours, a rich, panoramic exploration of female friendship, class, new motherhood, and independence

Val and Milly fell in love with France at the same time they fell in love with each other and became immediate best friends. Then, they bonded as the only Black students on a study-abroad trip. Now, they are in their thirties, each married and with a baby girl on the way. When Milly suggests Val move to New York to raise their daughters together after a decade apart, it’s a resounding yes. 

Despite their excitement, the pair secretly wonder if their friendship has always worked best as a trio. From that first trip to France, these two motherless daughters were taken under the wing of an older woman named Helene. She showered them with money, love and attention, and showed them the possibilities of a meaningful future. But without Helene, who are Milly and Val?

Milly, a successful influencer married to restaurant royalty, is occupied with her desire for independence. Val, a brilliant journalist, is struggling to write her first book and fit into her old friend’s new world. The realities of class and social capital, of strained marriages and the demands of motherhood, serve as constant reminders of how far apart they’ve grown. And no matter how much they try to avoid it, everything comes back to the rift that began all those years ago in France. What they’ve long tried to bury may finally destroy their sisterhood.

Weaving between Brooklyn brownstones and the glittering beaches of southern France, Take What You Can is a dazzling novel exploring what it means to be a mother when you have none, a sister without blood ties, and a woman in pursuit of the life she wants. With her signature sharply-observed prose, Coster illustrates what it means to be—and to stay—someone’s person through all phases of life.

Genres: Fiction

368 pages, Hardcover

Expected publication July 7, 2026

About the author

Naima Coster is the author of WHAT'S MINE AND YOURS, an instant New York Times bestseller, as well as a Read with Jenna and Book of the Month Club pick. Her debut, HALSEY STREET, was a finalist for the 2018 Kirkus Prize for Fiction and longlisted for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. It was recommended as a must-read by People, Essence, BitchMedia, Well-Read Black Girl, The Skimm, and the Brooklyn Public Library among others.

Naima’s essays have appeared in the New York Times, Elle, Time, Kweli, The Paris Review Daily, The Cut, The Sunday Times, Catapult, and elsewhere. In 2020, she was named a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Honoree.

Reviews

[Em · Rating 5 out of 5]

Take What You Can by Naima Coster is a rare, tender, and bracing exploration of female friendship that refuses easy arcs or sentimental resolution. This is a novel about the long haul exploring the way friendship stretches, frays, and sometimes reforms across decades marked by grief, ambition, love, and the seismic shift of motherhood.

Coster captures what so many stories about coming-of-age leave out: that becoming an adult doesn’t mean outgrowing conflict, but learning how to stay in relationship through mistakes, misattunements, and change. From the first pages, I was hooked by the honesty of this book. It doesn’t rush to redeem its characters. This novel honors the slow, uneasy work of understanding one another again and again.

At the heart of the novel are Milly and Val, whose bond is shaped as much by what they share as by what they lack—particularly mothering that was safe, consistent, and nurturing. Milly’s journey into motherhood is shadowed by grief; having lost her mother years before becoming one herself, she grapples with the fear that something essential is missing in the way she connects to her daughter. Val, raised by a verbally and emotionally abusive mother, becomes intensely attuned and deeply attached to her own child, almost to the point of helicopter parenting. Coster holds these contrasts with skill and care, showing how motherhood can both heal and reopen wounds. The novel understands that parenting doesn’t erase trauma and instead it activates it, reshapes it, and sometimes exposes it in unexpected ways.

What makes this a five-star read for me is the emotional intelligence threaded through every relationship, not just between Milly and Val, but between women and their children, their partners, their younger selves, and the versions of one another they’ve outgrown. As the story moves between Brooklyn and southern France, it reckons with class, ambition, hidden rage, and the quiet resentments that can build when lives diverge. Even in its most painful moments, this novel is rooted in love. It’s about that kind of bond that doesn’t guarantee harmony but insists on the truth. Take What You Can is about what it means to mother without having been mothered, to sustain friendship through rupture, and to choose again and again to stay with someone as life keeps changing.

[BekahPG · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's a lot to love in this book, including sparkling descriptions of extravagant food and drink, beautiful settings, and gorgeous clothes. The book starts out strong, with intriguing characters and a promising premise.

As they embark on motherhood, Val and Milly make decisions that range from seemingly random to purposely destructive. Coster beautifully illustrates how hard and confusing it is to be a mother in the wake of trauma and loss. But while the characters do change and grow by the end of the novel, there's also a lot that's ignored or glossed over. Like the severe alcoholism that impacts both women significantly, yet no one (author or character) ever names.

Some of the muddle might also be due to themes that aren't fully tackled. The book is saying *something* about money, privilege, giving gifts to (and taking gifts from) family and friends, giving or withholding loans, where money should come from, what jobs are respectable, and what defines true "worth." But *what* is it saying? Maybe there are no answers in the late-stage capitalist world we're living in, but I found myself wishing the author committed to more of a distinct point of view.

All in all, this was an enjoyable read with memorable characters and beautiful descriptions of France and NYC.

Thanks to #Netgalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.