Girl's Girl: A Novel

A hypnotic debut about the pivotal summer that shatters the delicate balance between three best friends

“An extraordinary book about friendships, first lust, and other quiet terrors . . . full of longing and many different kinds of love.”—Frances Cha, author of If I Had Your Face

Fifteen-year-old Mina’s whole world is her two best friends, but after an unexpected kiss, the established dynamics of their trio quickly unravel. Everything that was once shared openly, from clothes to secrets, now feels impossibly fragile. Loyalties shift and tensions simmer across the long days of this pivotal summer, where the girls have nowhere new to go and everything new to feel.

Looking back, an adult Mina traces the undercurrents of longing that shaped her first experience of desire. The rituals of girlhood—gossip, selfies, sleepovers, and videogames—become threads in a delicate, volatile web of intimacy, in which everything feels achingly fleeting and permanently etched. Loving one person, Mina learns, can change the way we love everyone else—including ourselves.

Bold, vulnerable, and sharply observant, Girl’s Girl is a sundrenched and dewy snapshot of modern girl culture set in the blaze of one suburban Midwest summer.