Single Girls: A Novel About Helen Gurley Brown and the Women Who Revolutionized Cosmopolitan Magazine in the 1960s

by John Searles

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 the book), 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 legendary 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

376 pages, Kindle Edition

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!

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[Maria Adela Cardenas · Rating 1 out of 5]

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

[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.

[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.

[Bookreporter.com Historical Fiction · Rating 5 out of 5]

New York Times bestselling author John Searles worked at Cosmopolitan for 23 years and became friends with its founding editor at the end of her career, the iconic Helen Gurley Brown.

Searles’ latest novel, SINGLE GIRLS, opens with the gruesome death of Helen’s father, Ira. The devastating impact on her life is both an impetus for her to make something of herself and a damper on her expectations of finding true happiness. The plot quickly moves to Helen’s early days at Cosmopolitan, a magazine in search of an audience. Her then-boss at Hearst offers her the chance to turn it around in three issues or risk the likelihood of being fired. She succeeds beyond the rosiest forecasts, assembling a team of like-minded but distinctive women along the way.

Real-life characters in the story include Liz Smith, who was an editor at Cosmo before she started her syndicated gossip column in the mid-1970s, and Francesco Scavullo, who photographed the covers of the magazine for decades.

The staff discussions give readers a sense of how transformative life must have been for women in the 1960s. The pill had just been introduced, along with the Equal Pay Act, and books like THE FEMININE MYSTIQUE and, of course, Helen’s SEX AND THE SINGLE GIRL had been published. But traditional attitudes remain, in the office and in society, especially around women and their sexuality. At times the Cosmo staff seems to debate the era's contradictions in witty shorthand:

“I worry someday people will look back and wonder what the hell we were thinking.”

“I already wonder about that sometimes.”

“The Jello-O molds”

“The miniskirts…”

“Well, I’d say their lives, whatever they’re like, would seem as strange to us.”

Although it seems as if they are rooted in their era, throughout the book Searles slyly anticipates a future generation’s response.

By interweaving the scenes of Helen’s rise to power as an icon of the New Woman with episodes from her childhood and coming of age in Los Angeles, Searles gives his subject a depth that is by turns poignant and tragic. Not only is her father killed in a freak accident, her sister contracts polio as a teen. Her mother moves the family from Arkansas to L.A. to be near Ira’s brother, but she has to work several jobs to support them.

Helen feels guilty about it all. When she is finally able to leave, she moves to New York and meets and marries film producer David Brown. He encourages her to write and publish SEX AND THE SINGLE GIRL, which sells two million copies in three weeks and lands her the Cosmo job.

Searles makes the ending of SINGLE GIRLS dramatic and --- as it concludes on New Year’s Eve, when the 1970s are about to be ushered in --- circular, so that the tribulations of the early years are resolved. It’s a satisfying place to leave not just the novel’s characters, but also the decade that defines them.

Reviewed by Lorraine W. Shanley

[Donna · Rating 5 out of 5]

She had this idea of a magazine specifically for single women- an extremely overlooked population. Pitching her idea to the last magazine publisher on her list, who only met with her because her husband was a successful filmmaker, she first told him about what would be covered in its pages-fashion, advice, cooking and health, entertainment news-oh, and sex. He wasn't buying that. So she hit him with statistics, something she knew well from her job as the only woman in the ad agency and the most successful advertising campaign writer in the building. Her audience will consist of young and mature single women, divorced women, and widows, who don't relate to othe 50's style women's magazines featuring marriage, children, and homemaking.  This magazine will be a new concept and will have no competition. He mulled this over and took her to a set of offices.  Telling her that the present"limp bunny" of a magazine was going to be dissolved and its employees fired, he gave her three issues in which to build an audience.  If it failed after three, he would pull the plug on her too-the woman was Helen Gurley Brown and the magazine was Cosmopolitan.
Searles has written a biographical novel of the founder of the magazine where he worked for many years. He begins with Brown's fractured childhood, where an elevator accident killed her beloved father, and she is sure that it was her fault. Her mother moves her and her sister from Arkansas to California, hoping for some financial help from her husband's brother but he's poor also-they end up renting in a bad part of Los Angeles. Her attempts at making friends at her new school are unsuccessful-especially because of a bad case of acne that permanently scares her face. From this tough beginning, her story of becoming the voice of the modern single woman is unlikely and amazing.The author frames his book through Brown and her choice of editors-each hand-picked young woman has a tale to tell, which provides insight into herself and the history and audience of the magazine. Brown pushed herstaff to provide relevant content, while also making it useful, entertainingand a little salty.  Her staff also pushed her in directions she hadn’t considered, but that’s why Cosmopolitan was always on the cutting edge.
Searles has written a book that traces the history of a paradigm shift. And in case you haven’t heard, the late 60’s are currently roaring back with a vengeance.  The best way to celebrate Cosmo and the emergence of the satisfied single girl is to get on your flower power mini-dress, your John Lennon shades, and your white go-go boots and immerse yourself in this fantastic novel-peace out!

[Kimberly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some books entertain you. Some books send you straight to Google at 11:00 at night because you suddenly need to know everything about the people behind the story. This one definitely did the second.

Single Girls by John Searles reminded me how much of everyday life changed because a few women decided they were tired of being told what their lives should look like.

Published by Mariner Books. Thank you to the publisher for the gifted copy.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Before picking this up, I knew Helen Gurley Brown’s name, but not much beyond that. By the time I finished, I found myself reading articles, looking up old magazine covers, and falling down a rabbit hole I hadn’t expected.

The book follows Helen as she takes over a struggling Cosmopolitan magazine, but what surprised me was how much I cared about the women around her. The Book Editor’s terrible luck in love had me groaning. The Entertainment Editor kept finding herself in situations that felt one step away from disaster. And the unofficial Sex Editor brought some of the funniest moments in the entire book.

“Not every woman just wanted to get married and have children.”

What worked for me was that nobody felt larger than life. Helen is ambitious and driven, but she’s also insecure at times. She carries old wounds and doubts. The other women stumble too. They make bad choices, get their hearts broken, and keep moving forward.

There were moments that made me laugh and a few that genuinely caught me off guard emotionally. I didn’t expect to feel so invested in a group of magazine editors from the 1960s, but here we are.

I also appreciated how the story showed what women were up against in the workplace without turning the book into a history lesson. The challenges were simply part of their daily lives, which somehow made them hit even harder.

If you enjoy historical fiction, stories set in New York, publishing drama, strong female characters, and books about women figuring things out as they go, this is one I’d recommend.

When I closed the final page, I felt like I’d spent time with real people rather than characters on paper. That’s usually a pretty good sign.

Have you ever picked up a historical fiction novel and ended up researching the real person afterward?

[shereadswith_coffee · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was intrigued by this novel because its topic was something a little different than my norm but it caught my attention! The book is set in the mid 1960’s Manhattan and followed Helen Gurley Brown reshaping Cosmopolitan magazine. Author John Serles captured exactly what it was like in mid 1965 with the fast paced, glamorous yet mail dominated workplace. This novel dives into ambition, fashion and changing times.

The story follows the iconic Helen Gurley Brown as she takes over Cosmopolitan magazine. She’s given only a strict three issue trial by a Hearst executive to prove her vision for a modern women’s magazine. She wasted no time in hiring her team of smart, savvy and sexy women. You find yourself rooting for them , wanting to hear it all , the experiences in their lives , the scandal, the taboo topics edging the magazine columns to their captivating limits.
It was indulgent and spicy!

I enjoyed the flashbacks and different timelines from Helen’s time at Cosmopolitan back to her difficult childhood and what curbed her life to help shape her into the legendary woman she became .
Helen’s husband, David Brown, Hollywood film producer, plays a huge role behind the scenes, her sounding board of all her wildness dreams and scandalous cover lines.

What I liked most about the novel was the energy brought to life by Helen and her team of savvy, fearless female staff! Their snappy banter and bold personalities allowed you to envision as a “single girl” trying to make a mark on the world . It’s witty and funny and so epically truthful.

It’s storytelling at its best, taking you back in time as if you can hear the clickety clack of typewriters while immersing yourself in the era. Imagine a Devil wears Prada meets 9 to 5 giving you a front row seat to the glamour, unapologetically sexy and daring gambles every woman out there wanted to hear and read about!

A thrill of read, in a nostalgic era, celebrating the fierce power of unstoppable women and the bravery of Helen Gurley Brown behind it all.

Thanks to @harperaudio @marinerbooks @netgalley for this ALC and eARC in exchange for my honest review.

[Brooke · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. As a young woman, Cosmopolitan was my favorite magazine to pick up. It had the best articles and always felt relevant to my life as a nascent woman in my early 20s. How else was I going to figure out guys, fashion, beauty, dieting, and everything else we young ladies aspired to?

Despite being a Cosmopolitan reader, I knew nothing about the women behind the magazine, which is why I picked up John Searles’ Single Girls. I was surprised to discover that Cosmopolitan got its start back when my own mother was still a child, so it would have likely been my grandmothers who read it first … if they dared read anything so scandalous at all! Yes, Cosmo was even pushing boundaries back in the 60s.

Searles’ Single Girls follows Helen Gurley Brown, the woman who made the magazine what it is today, and her team of editors who transformed Cosmopolitan from a dumpy frumpy magazine that no one wanted to pick up to a sizzling sexy serial that everyone wanted to read.

The book starts off exploring how Brown takes over the dying magazine on a trial offer, but soon transitions into something quite different, which is also where my disappointment for this novel comes in. When it came to the parts of the story pertaining to the fast-paced and exciting magazine world, I was all in and completely captivated. However, the narrative soon moves on to sharing anecdotes about the personal lives of Cosmo’s team of editors. We learn more about what these women (several who did not exist in real life) were like before or when they were not working on the magazine, but that isn’t what I signed up for, unfortunately.

Once you read up on John Searles’ inspiration for writing this book, the narrative choices he made begin to make more sense; however, that still does not mean that I am raving about them. This book is solid historical fiction and captures what it meant to be a woman in the 1960s. However, if you are picking this book up because you want a behind the scenes glimpse into running a magazine, this is not it.

[Lauralee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Helen Gurley Brown was an editor-in-chief of the Cosmopolitan magazine for over three decades. She was also the author of the bestselling nonfiction book, Sex and the Single Girl. This biographical novel tells how Helen revitalized a failing magazine company. With her savvy business skills, the Cosmopolitan became a popular and bestselling magazine. It also tells how Helen Gurley Brown became a controversial figure.

I have heard of Helen Gurley Brown from the 1964 movie, Sex and the Single Girl, in which she was portrayed by Natalie Wood. Therefore, I was ecstatic to read a biographical novel based upon her life. From a young age, Helen was traumatized by her father’s death. Her sister, Mary Eloine Gurley, has a disability. Helen has spent her youth with failing romances. In her late thirties when she married her husband, David Brown. It was through her husband’s support and encouragement that Helen was able to write a nonfiction book. When Helen is tasked with saving a failing magazine, she finds a group of intelligent women who help make it popular. Therefore, I found Helen to be an engaging heroine, and I was eager to read about her achievements.

Overall, this book is about love, ambition, and friendship. The message of this book is to follow your dreams. I like that this book portrayed how single women navigated dating life during the 1960s. I like all of the characters and thought that they were relatable. I did not care for the structure because it kept jumping around multiple time periods. I would have liked the book to be more chronological. Nevertheless, I found it to be a witty and humorous read! Single Girls was very engaging and entertaining! This novel is perfect for fans of Sex and the Single Girls! I recommend this novel for fans of Daisy Jones & The Six, More Than You Know, and Clotheshorse!
(Note: I read an ARC copy of this book in courtesy of Netgalley.)

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you to Mariner Books and Harper Collins for this gifted ARC!

This was such an interesting and attention grabbing read. I loved that it was based on real people and events, the author does state that they took liberties with some things, but knowing that this was based off of a real person and life just made it so interesting to me. I also loved that the POV's shift and change throughout the different parts of the book, I thought that was a really fun element to get everyone's views.

This book is centered around the life of Helen Gurley Brown in the 1960's, she is the editor in chief of the magazine Cosmopolitan. She wrote a book and had readers mail her advice request letters that she would respond to and that was the basis of her desire to create the magazine itself. There were all these publications that were geared towards the married women of the time, but there was an empty space of no one talking to the single women of the time. She wanted to fill that vacuum and make single women feel seen and have a space to turn to that could/would be relatable. 
There is a lot of empowerment in this book of women embracing sexuality and their independence, that it is also okay to not be married or have a man in their life. There were also big moments of empowering women in the workplace as well, women weren't exactly in prominent positions very often in the 1960's and Helen kind of paved some ground to make that more common.

I loved this book, I also really enjoyed the insights we get when Helen's diary entries are shown. It was just all around a really fun and empowering read. I absolutely recommend reading the Author's Note at the end of the book too. It enhanced everything about it even more for me. This releases July 7th!

*This ARC was given by Mariner Books and Harper Collins through NetGalley, all opinions are my own.*

[Lis Sigona · Rating 5 out of 5]

7/25/26 - 8/6/26
Single Girls by John Searles
This was a novel purchased along with the July Book of the Month Club through the Brenda Novak Book Club Group. I choose to add this to my monthly book box because this novel is about Helen Gurley Brown and Cosmopolitan Magazine. I grew up in this period of time, admired Helen Gurley Brown and I loved fashion! My dream was to go to Fashion School and become a buyer for big department stores traveling the world at fashion shows. Part of this novel is fictional, but John Searles, did personally know HGB as she was known to many and he worked for her and Cosmo. He thought it was just a short term position that he ended up climbing up the ladder and over twenty-three years later was still there. Along the way, he kept thinking someone should tell this story… and so he finally wrote this semi-fictional novel. He didn’t know all the stories and he embellished what he didn’t but he made it perfectly what HGB was about and what life was like for women in the ‘60’s-‘80’s. Truthfully, I’m not sure women in some areas (salaries) certain status in certain jobs) have gained much in the 2026 on. My niece was an environment lawyer and she had a case in my local hometown - when she got up to speak the presiding Judge stated to her he was not interested in hearing from a law clerk on the subject. He wanted to hear from the Attorney. She calmly counted to ten silently and said to the presiding judge, you Honor, I am the Counsel for the New York State Department of Environmental Claims against the County of XXX for violations and she rattled off all the codes and so forth. Just because she was a woman, wearing a suit, that judge felt she couldn’t be the lawyer. How wrong he was. She blew him out of his chair. Don’t judge a person by their gender!

[Diane · Rating 5 out of 5]

John Searles usually writes atmospheric psychological thrillers (“Her Last Affair” and “Strange But True”), and this summer he switches gears with “Single Girls” a delightful fictionalized book about Helen Gurley Brown and the origins of Cosmopolitan magazine in the 1960s.

Helen’s book 1965 “Sex and the Single Girl” encouraging women to hold off on marriage until they were ready and to enjoy a healthy sex life scandalized many people. It also was a clarion call for single women everywhere.

The success of the book encouraged Helen to start a magazine for women. Most of the male publishers turned her away immediately but one publisher (whose wife encouraged him to give Helen a chance) offered her three issues to prove that she could sell magazines and advertising revenue in the magazine.

In the novel we meet the women Helen hired as writers and editors, and they are each unique and interesting. I was particularly drawn to Helen’s friendship with Liz Smith, who went on to become a mainstay of New York City tabloids writing columns about the rich, famous, and infamous. The larger-than-life Liz and the self-professed “mouseburger” Helen had a wonderful work relationship.

I so enjoyed reading about all the hard work that went into making Cosmopolitan one of the most successful magazines in the country. Cosmopolitan’s ad revenue was always among the highest grossing in the publisher’s portfolio. Anyone who was around in the 1970s-1990s will remember the ubiquitous “Cosmo” covers and enjoy reading how it all started.

John Searles was the editor of Cosmopolitan’s book review page for some years and his love for the magazine business, and Helen Gurley Brown and Cosmopolitan in particular, adds such joy and insight.

[Katelyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

After her wildly popular book, Helen Gurley Brown is looking for her next big adventure. This desire leads her to Cosmopolitan magazine, a unique opportunity to not only share her wisdom, but also save the magazine from failure. With her “single girls” in tow, she has three issues to prove herself to not only the magazine bigwigs, but her growing fanbase. Each girl shares their unique experiences with the magazine along with the reader. From a book lover involved in an affair, to a bartender recovering from a lacking, semi-arranged, marriage, the issues of Cosmopolitan are bound to get some attention. The reader follows Helen and her girls from the beginning of the revised magazine until the eve of 1970. Single Girls not only gives a fictionalized look into one of the largest magazines, but also shows how a small group of women came into their own in the 1960s.

I did not expect to enjoy this, but I was hooked from the very first chapter! I got strong Shopgirls (by Jessica Anya Blau) vibes from the book, which only increased my enjoyment. I will say I enjoyed the first 75% of the book more than the last bit. The chapters about all of the girls were the most enjoyable parts. I loved getting an intimate look into their lives! I didn’t really connect with Helen’s character, which made those chapters a little more difficult. However, this was a very good read! If you enjoy historical fiction, please give this one a try! Although this is a fictional account, it gives a good look into how the beginnings of the Cosmo we know came to be.

Thank you to NetGalley, Mariner Books, and John Searles for a copy of this book. I received this ARC for free and am leaving a review voluntarily.

[Edie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I ordered this book even before The Friends & Fiction podcast was over on YouTube! Authors/Hosts Mary Kay Andrews & Patti Calahan Henry did one incredible sales pitch without even knowing it while interviewing the John Searles (JS) earlier in July of 2026.

If you thought you knew Helen Gurley Brown (HGB) from buying Cosmopolitan Magazine back in the ‘70s, ‘80s & beyond or if you remember her on talk shows like The Tonight Show w/Johnny Carson…settle in for a tempting & revealing read about this spicy Editor-in-Chief!

Despite the then provocative topics that HGB discussed in her books, her magazine or talk shows, this book is probably PG-rated. You see far salacious content on present day social media. That said, I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend this for a book club w/some “Boomers” plus I’m 67. I know endless female friends that I’ve already told about this book & many times, that sells the book best!

John Searles created this endearing tribute to someone he worked with over 23 years. He worked his way up the ladder of success just as HGB did. An impressive stint given he started out at the bottom, thought he’d give it 2 weeks & rose to an editor in various positions.

I never realized what HGB had to endure as a child & young woman. The portion where she met & charmed her husband, David, was my favorite. She was born with the instincts of a hunter & she knew her prey no matter whether it was in the boardroom, the family homestead (wherever that might be at the time) the playground or her romantic male interests!

Not to be missed are the author’s notes & his acknowledgements because again it reveals that this is a young man (the author is in his 50s, but looks decades younger) who still honors his boss & dear friend, HGB.

[Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had a good time with this audiobook.

First of all, Amy Ryan was really great. I somehow didn't realize until the interview at the end that she was Holly on The Office! She absolutely nailed this narration. She brought so much warmth, humor, and personality to Helen and all of the women around her.

This book immediately sent me down a Helen Gurley Brown internet rabbit hole, which, for me, is like the highest compliment I can give a piece of historical fiction. I found myself constantly wondering what was real, what was fictionalized, and how one woman managed to have such a huge cultural impact.

You can really feel the amount of care and research that went into this book. Knowing that John Searles worked at Cosmo and knew Helen personally makes the whole thing feel incredibly affectionate and lived in. It never felt like someone writing about a legend. It felt like someone honoring one.

That said...this book is long! There were definitely moments where my attention drifted, and with such a large cast and timeline jumps, I occasionally had to stop and remember who someone was or where we were in the story.

But overall, I was having too much fun to mind all that much. The historical setting was fascinating, the women were ambitious and messy and entertaining, and several of the storylines were genuinely funny.

This landed somewhere around a 4.5 star read for me. A liiiiiittle sprawling at times, but very charming, incredibly well researched, and a really impressive piece of historical fiction!

Thank you to NetGalley, HarperAudio, and John Searles for the ALC!

[lovemyshelf · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. This book has heart, grit, and humor. And guts, glory, and intelligence. It has so much beauty and strength and everything attribute belonging to the strongest women in history...but it is written by a man! How? As my jaw dropped throughout the book at the genius of the characters and the author's artistry, it often doubled as I remembered this book is written by a man. I just could not get over it! It brought to mind so many great books I have read in the past, the most recent ones being Let's Call Her Barbie by Rene Rosen and Dear Mrs. Bird by AJ Pearce. I love that this is based on real events and real people and it ALMOST makes me want to pick up an issue of Cosmo! Or at least find an old issue on eBay!
I especially loved how Searles would take a word and begin and end segments of the book with that word. It was such a fun way to toy with the reader. There was love, pain, and plenty of rejoicing in the book and I feel like women everywhere AND the male author should rejoice over this book. I hope it becomes super popular and makes Helen Gurley Brown a household name; we need celebrities to look up to that deserve admiration because of what they accomplish for our society, instead of these empty shell celebrities.
Thank you so much to the publisher, NetGalley, the author, and Helen Gurley Brown: I am grateful to have had the chance to read this beauty of a book about this firecracker of a lady!

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Huge thank you to NetGalley and Mariner Books for my advanced copy and to John Searles for writing one of the best books I've read in awhile!

This is it. This is my favorite book of the year! I loved this book so much and the weird thing is, it's not my usual genre of liking. I'm one that loves a good psychological thriller but you know sometimes you need something to clear that mud out of your head and BOY did this one do that for me!! It is a fantastic read! I can't say it enough. I grew up reading Cosmo magazine and was all about those quizzes so I was intrigued by the offer to read an advance copy of the story of THE Helen Gurley Brown and her early years at Cosmo.

This is just such an amazing story. I can't even count the number of times that I laughed out loud (got weird looks from my coworkers) and there's a lot of grit to this story too. A lot of lessons and reminders and inspiration. It is just so good. She is definitely someone I wish I could have met and worked for and hung out with and her husband is just as amazing, what a great team they were. And speaking of teams - can't forget the other single girls that worked under her. All had their very own unique, amazing, interesting, page turning stories.

It comes out in July, get yourself a copy ASAP. If you don't love it, I think there might be something wrong with you (not really but maybe). You really should read it.