Bad Friend: On Joyous, Imperfect Love

by Tiffany Watt Smith

A rebellious new history of female friendship and timely reclamation of the ‘bad friend’.

For as long as women have had friends, they’ve got us drunk, spilled our secrets, bailed on plans and meddled where we wished they wouldn’t. They’ve also held back our hair, sat with us while we cried and made us feel altogether invincible. Maybe none of us is perfect.

Stirred by her own disappointments in friendship, cultural historian Tiffany Watt Smith sets out in pursuit of the rule-breaking women who offer a messier, more expansive vision of the connection we just might need the most.

336 pages, Paperback

Published February 26, 2026

About the author

Dr. Tiffany Watt Smith is a cultural historian and author of The Book of Human Emotions. In 2014, she was named a BBC New Generation Thinker, and her TED talk The History of Emotions has over 1.5 million views. She is currently a Wellcome Trust research fellow at the Centre for the History of the Emotions at Queen Mary University of London. In her previous career, she was a theater director.

Reviews

[aqilahreads · Rating 4 out of 5]

the struggle i had reading this book is REAL 👁️👄👁️ ((in a good way))

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

i genuinely never thought i’d be able to read so much abt female friendships, let alone a whole book researching the history, complexities & messiness behind them. but i’m so glad i did bc there were SO many moments where i was just like….. omg. relatable. 🫠

especially because i’m reading this at a time when friendship has been something i’ve been thinking about a lot.

there were so many things here about jealousy, resentment, hurt, distance, losing someone, wanting connection & even the fear of making new friends after being hurt that hit a little too close to home.

and honestly…... am i a bad friend ???

yes. i have to admit that i have been.

i’ve been petty. jealous. hurtful. i’ve had feelings i didn’t know how to process properly and cried so bad. and i’ve looked back at certain things and wondered how someone could still love me after seeing that side of me.

but that’s what i appreciated most about this book — it doesn’t pretend friendship is always beautiful and uncomplicated. it makes space for the ugly feelings too.

being a flawed friend doesn’t automatically mean you’re incapable of love, or that you don’t deserve to be loved. we’re all flawed people trying to figure ourselves out, and sometimes we hurt each other along the way.

maybe we put too much pressure on friendships to be effortless, supportive & forever. bc when something goes wrong, we start wondering if the whole friendship was a mistake.

but maybe it wasn’t.

maybe someone can be deeply important to you even if the friendship changes. maybe you can love someone and still not be able to return to what you once had.

reading this painfully hit the right spots for me & i think it was something i needed. it made me question myself, but also made me feel a little less alone in the messiness of friendship. maybe being a bad friend sometimes doesn’t mean you are only a bad friend.

you can mess up and still be loved. you can hurt someone and still learn. you can lose a friendship and still carry what it taught you.

and maybe you can be scared to let people in again…... and still, someday, choose to. 🌱

[Lucy Acheson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Somewhat interesting but the narrative structure was quite weak and I feel like the theoretical side of the book wasn’t sufficiently developed

[Kristin Light · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this!! A nice balance of historical analysis & personal tales that kept it engaging