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First Love: Essays on Friendship
A bold, poignant essay collection that treats women’s friendships as the love stories they truly are, from the critically acclaimed author of Negative Space.
Lilly Dancyger always thought of her closest friendships as great loves, complex and profound as any romance. When her beloved cousin was murdered just as both girls were entering adulthood, Dancyger felt a new urgency in her devotion to the women in her life—a desire to hold her friends close while she still could. In First Love, this urgency runs through a striking exploration of the bonds between women, from the intensity of adolescent best friendship and fluid sexuality to mothering and chosen family.
Each essay in this incisive collection is grounded in a close female friendship in Dancyger’s life, reaching outward to dissect cultural assumptions about identity and desire, and the many ways women create space for each other in a world that wants us small. Seamlessly weaving personal experience with literature and pop culture—ranging from fairytales to true crime, from Anaïs Nin and Sylvia Plath to Heavenly Creatures and the “sad girls” of Tumblr—Dancyger’s essays form a kaleidoscopic story of a life told through friendships, and an expansive interrogation of what it means to love each other.
Though friendship will never be enough to keep us safe from the dangers of the world, Dancyger reminds us that love is always worth the risk, and that when tragedy strikes, it’s our friends who will help us survive. In First Love, these essential bonds get their due.
Lilly Dancyger always thought of her closest friendships as great loves, complex and profound as any romance. When her beloved cousin was murdered just as both girls were entering adulthood, Dancyger felt a new urgency in her devotion to the women in her life—a desire to hold her friends close while she still could. In First Love, this urgency runs through a striking exploration of the bonds between women, from the intensity of adolescent best friendship and fluid sexuality to mothering and chosen family.
Each essay in this incisive collection is grounded in a close female friendship in Dancyger’s life, reaching outward to dissect cultural assumptions about identity and desire, and the many ways women create space for each other in a world that wants us small. Seamlessly weaving personal experience with literature and pop culture—ranging from fairytales to true crime, from Anaïs Nin and Sylvia Plath to Heavenly Creatures and the “sad girls” of Tumblr—Dancyger’s essays form a kaleidoscopic story of a life told through friendships, and an expansive interrogation of what it means to love each other.
Though friendship will never be enough to keep us safe from the dangers of the world, Dancyger reminds us that love is always worth the risk, and that when tragedy strikes, it’s our friends who will help us survive. In First Love, these essential bonds get their due.
224 pages, Hardcover
First published May 7, 2024
About the author
Lilly Dancyger
3 books261 followersLilly Dancyger is the author of Negative Space (2021), a reported and illustrated memoir selected by Carmen Maria Machado as a winner of the Santa Fe Writers Project Literary Awards; and First Love, a collection of personal and critical essays about the power and complexity of female friendship, forthcoming from The Dial Press in Spring 2024. She is also the editor of Burn It Down (2019), a critically acclaimed anthology of essays on women’s anger, and her writing has been published by Guernica, Literary Hub, The Rumpus, Longreads, Off Assignment, The Washington Post, Playboy, Rolling Stone, and more. She lives in New York City.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 347 reviews
September 6, 2024
the current coolest thing for a book to be is essays about friendship.
this book was beautiful and lush when it was that. dancyger's huge love for her friends is apparent, and her argument that sisterly love between two female friends is as significant and life-altering as romantic love shone through.
it's actually these tacit arguments that are much stronger than the on-page ones. when this descends into essay, it's a much weaker book, listing synopses and quotes and kind of ambling toward well-established lines of thought...with a lot of semicolons and em dashes along the way.
i loved this as memoir, and felt kind of bored, even irritated, when it tried to be convincing. it's also a very unforgiving book, filled with sweeping judgments of who is good and bad and worthy of sympathy and forgiveness, which felt odd for the tone. in a book about love, you expect some generosity with it.
bottom line: i love friends and i love memoirs. that should be enough!
(thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)
this book was beautiful and lush when it was that. dancyger's huge love for her friends is apparent, and her argument that sisterly love between two female friends is as significant and life-altering as romantic love shone through.
it's actually these tacit arguments that are much stronger than the on-page ones. when this descends into essay, it's a much weaker book, listing synopses and quotes and kind of ambling toward well-established lines of thought...with a lot of semicolons and em dashes along the way.
i loved this as memoir, and felt kind of bored, even irritated, when it tried to be convincing. it's also a very unforgiving book, filled with sweeping judgments of who is good and bad and worthy of sympathy and forgiveness, which felt odd for the tone. in a book about love, you expect some generosity with it.
bottom line: i love friends and i love memoirs. that should be enough!
(thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)
April 12, 2024
This book felt like a mix between Patti Smith’s Just Kids and Dolly Alderton’s Everything I Know About Love. I couldn’t stop reading this one. I laughed, I cried, I related so often (especially the essay ‘In Search of Smoky cafes’ in which the author talked about her teenage longing for living a bohemian artist life in smoky cafes in Paris - because same). It was vulnerable and beautifully written. I love essays that are an ode to female friendship so. much.
October 26, 2024
Yay friendship! Love that there is more attention being paid to friendship. I thought Lilly Dancyger touched on a nice array of coming-of-age and serious topics in this collection, including losing a friend to suicide, friendships you maintain and friendships that fade, and the decision to have kids or not. I appreciated her realness about her feelings about her mother, too.
That said, unfortunately I found the writing itself a tad boring. Just stylistically, there was something on the sentence level that didn’t grab me. For more gripping nonfiction and fiction about friendship, my mind goes to Let’s Take the Long Way Home by Gail Caldwell, When You Were Everything by Ashley Woodfolk, and When We Were Infinite>/a href> by Kelly Loy Gilbert.
That said, unfortunately I found the writing itself a tad boring. Just stylistically, there was something on the sentence level that didn’t grab me. For more gripping nonfiction and fiction about friendship, my mind goes to Let’s Take the Long Way Home by Gail Caldwell, When You Were Everything by Ashley Woodfolk, and When We Were Infinite>/a href> by Kelly Loy Gilbert.
May 6, 2024
in a series of 15 love letters to girl hood and friendships, a montage of memories consolidated with an analysis of media and social trends, Lilly has weaved together a beautiful collection of essays encompassing what it feels like to grow up and into each other, to love, to cherish, and to grieve all the friendships that pass through our lives, and how drifting apart has a beginning but never an end.
i had so many thoughts about this book, i wrote and rewrote this review several times, but i can’t express my adoration in a way that really portrayed how i felt.
standouts
⊹ Partner in Crime. (reflection on an all encompassing borderline obsessive friendship with an analysis of the film Heavenly Creatures)
⊹ Sad Girls. (possibly my favorite from the collection, a brilliant self reflection on her teenage years and the veneration of ‘sad girl’ icons (plath, lana del rey, tumblr girls), a phenomenon among teenage girls that continues to exist in various manifestations.)
outro.
i love my friends and i love friendship. theres just something about girlhood, about sisterhood, about sad girls joining together in order to validate their own pain, something about teenage girls banding together to defy the norms, and to laugh and cry through our inner sorrows and desires.
who am i if not the people i love, all the friends i’ve made? who am i if not the things i cherish, the books i’ve adored? and i adore this book.
what a wonderful essay collection. <3
[thank you to the publishers for the arc!]
April 23, 2024
Thank you to Penguin Random House and Lilly Dancyger for the advanced reader copy of this book prior to publication May 2024!
I recently read 'Big Friendship: How we keep each other close', and I realize that what I was looking for in that book was what I was GIFTED in this book. This book was endearing, poignant, raw, and full of compassion. This makes me love female friendships and girlhood in a way that rivals how I felt walking out of the theater after seeing Barbie for the the first time.
I wasn't expecting the direction this book took, so I wasn't expecting how emotional it would make me. I didn't know I was going to have my heart yanked on for 200 some pages??? And I mean that as the highest compliment. The love Lilly has for her cousin and how she navigates the largeness of that love even after she's gone just pulled at every heart string I've got. It truly felt like the perfect ode to Sabina.
I truly loved it so much!
I recently read 'Big Friendship: How we keep each other close', and I realize that what I was looking for in that book was what I was GIFTED in this book. This book was endearing, poignant, raw, and full of compassion. This makes me love female friendships and girlhood in a way that rivals how I felt walking out of the theater after seeing Barbie for the the first time.
I wasn't expecting the direction this book took, so I wasn't expecting how emotional it would make me. I didn't know I was going to have my heart yanked on for 200 some pages??? And I mean that as the highest compliment. The love Lilly has for her cousin and how she navigates the largeness of that love even after she's gone just pulled at every heart string I've got. It truly felt like the perfect ode to Sabina.
I truly loved it so much!
February 18, 2024
**ARC of this book provided by publisher in exchange for an honest review**
It's intriguing to see that although I have nothing in common with the author of this essays, her experiences with female friendship sound exactly like mine.
Lilly Dancyger did not have it easy growing up but luckily she always had a group of friends she could rely on. This book is a collection of autobiographical essays that are paying homage to those friendships. It opens and closes with Sabina - authors first true friend (and a First Love I assume) that was murdered in her early twenties. In between we get a broad spectrum of stories where I found a lot of tenderness, love and support but also moments of growing apart and grieving. It's impossible to finish this book and don't feel grateful for all the wonderful women that are present in your life. Call them today, don't wait.
It's intriguing to see that although I have nothing in common with the author of this essays, her experiences with female friendship sound exactly like mine.
Lilly Dancyger did not have it easy growing up but luckily she always had a group of friends she could rely on. This book is a collection of autobiographical essays that are paying homage to those friendships. It opens and closes with Sabina - authors first true friend (and a First Love I assume) that was murdered in her early twenties. In between we get a broad spectrum of stories where I found a lot of tenderness, love and support but also moments of growing apart and grieving. It's impossible to finish this book and don't feel grateful for all the wonderful women that are present in your life. Call them today, don't wait.
May 10, 2024
(-1 star for nonjudgemental Isr*el reference on pg 79 in my copy)
Otherwise I did love this tribute to complicated, obsessive, and committed female friendship. It was beautiful to see how the author sees her friends, and to learn about her through those friendships.
Otherwise I did love this tribute to complicated, obsessive, and committed female friendship. It was beautiful to see how the author sees her friends, and to learn about her through those friendships.
September 3, 2024
this book is a balm for the soul - 15 love letters from lilly dancyger to the most important women in her life. as someone whose closest friendships have recently surpassed the decade mark, so many of the feelings dancyger describes here are in tune with my own experience. the all-consuming nature of best friendship when you’re a teenager, the unmatched care we receive from and give to our friends, the growing apart and growing back together again, the countless hilarious and sweet memories, the unique and tender view we have of the people that mean the most to us in the world.
this essay collection was also a look into experiences that my group of friends hasn’t had yet. mutual mothering was a standout essay for me, where dancyger witnesses her friends becoming mothers, grapples with whether or not she wants to have a child, and reflects on the special ways in which we can act as mothers to our friends. dancyger doesn’t find a clear answer on if she will have children or not, and i appreciated the honesty with which she explored related questions.
i also really loved portraiture, a collaboration between lilly and her friend courtney, who is a photographer. the conversation they had about simply being yourself with a close friend and the resulting series of photographs was so interesting.
the essays discussing sylvia plath and heavenly creatures were other favorites as well. i’ve talked before about how the references an author incorporates can make or break a book, and i think dancyger did a great job at using the writer and the movie as backdrops for stories about her friends.
the urge to buy copies of this book for all my friends is so so real!
this essay collection was also a look into experiences that my group of friends hasn’t had yet. mutual mothering was a standout essay for me, where dancyger witnesses her friends becoming mothers, grapples with whether or not she wants to have a child, and reflects on the special ways in which we can act as mothers to our friends. dancyger doesn’t find a clear answer on if she will have children or not, and i appreciated the honesty with which she explored related questions.
i also really loved portraiture, a collaboration between lilly and her friend courtney, who is a photographer. the conversation they had about simply being yourself with a close friend and the resulting series of photographs was so interesting.
the essays discussing sylvia plath and heavenly creatures were other favorites as well. i’ve talked before about how the references an author incorporates can make or break a book, and i think dancyger did a great job at using the writer and the movie as backdrops for stories about her friends.
the urge to buy copies of this book for all my friends is so so real!
August 18, 2024
Impressive. Emotional. Absolutely wonderful, sentence and structure wise.
August 26, 2024
really enjoyed this mix of memoir/essays surrounding female friendships, girlhood, and mothering. my favorite essays had interesting and insightful pop culture analyses infused, like Partner in Crime.
January 22, 2024
thank you to the publisher and netgalley for the e-arc!
it feels very strange to dissect someone's work of memoir pieces, so i won't be saying much, but: although this had a few good lines that i highlighted, i ultimately didn't feel very blown away by the content. and that's okay! the author wrote it for themselves, at the end of the day, and you can tell a lot of pride and love went into it. so who cares what i think!
it feels very strange to dissect someone's work of memoir pieces, so i won't be saying much, but: although this had a few good lines that i highlighted, i ultimately didn't feel very blown away by the content. and that's okay! the author wrote it for themselves, at the end of the day, and you can tell a lot of pride and love went into it. so who cares what i think!
June 4, 2024
If there is one thing about me, it's that I will read any book that is a commentary on friendship, especially complex female friendships. Its a topic that is close to my heart and one I find so fascinating. So when I heard of this book, I was instantly on board. Essays seemed like the perfect way to talk about the innumerable ways that friendships weave into our lives. However, these essays were so discordant and I don't feel that they were succinctly tied together or had a tight overarching theme to them. I was left feeling disappointed by the content, the writing, and the flippancy shown in many of the essays.
Thank you to Netgalley for my ARC.
Thank you to Netgalley for my ARC.
May 17, 2024
Based on the title, First Love: Essays on Friendship, you may think when you pick up this book that you are signing up for laid-back, lighthearted essays but I am sorry—am I?—to inform you that there is not a lot of that within these pages (there is some). These are essays on friendship, yes, but they are also essays on familial love and familial disputes; murder; bisexuality; feminine sadness; grief and coping with loss; addiction; communal mothering and more.
Razor-sharp, striking, irresistible and one of my favorite collections this year.
Razor-sharp, striking, irresistible and one of my favorite collections this year.
November 11, 2024
Wish that there were 1/2 stars because this is a 4.5 for me!! My friendships are my most prized possessions and to read a book by someone who clearly feels the same way was quite a magical experience. A reminder to find your people & hold them tight. A reminder that chosen family is family and that the ebbs and flows of relationships are natural but the love of a friend stays with you forever. For anyone who loves their friends like family- read this book!!
May 27, 2024
This book of essays perfectly captures the intensity of female friendships, particularly the ones developed in adolescence and young adulthood. I devoured it.
June 1, 2024
A subject I’d read about in abundant tomes. Again, loving as eulogizing, even in the present. Sometimes I think we read to wash ourselves in a new sense of togetherness in our aloneness, that reading is the intellectualization of a form of belonging.
I’ve always written friends lots and lots of love letters, and maybe that’s the basis for wanting to write at all — telling someone that love is infinitely specific.
I’ve always written friends lots and lots of love letters, and maybe that’s the basis for wanting to write at all — telling someone that love is infinitely specific.
September 22, 2023
“[…] a reminder to tend my friendships, no matter how strong the unspoken bond; to show I care, before the only thing left to do is plant flowers.”
I cried 4 separate times for four separate reasons while reading this essay collection.
I also smiled and got goosebumps and felt nostalgic and warm and seen and loved.
But mostly, now I feel like I need to go kiss all my friends on their foreheads and remind them I love them and bask in the roles we all play in each others lives.
“It’s true that I’ve never been satisfied with friendships that stay on the surface. That my friends are my family, my truest beloveds, each relationship a world of its own.”
I cried 4 separate times for four separate reasons while reading this essay collection.
I also smiled and got goosebumps and felt nostalgic and warm and seen and loved.
But mostly, now I feel like I need to go kiss all my friends on their foreheads and remind them I love them and bask in the roles we all play in each others lives.
“It’s true that I’ve never been satisfied with friendships that stay on the surface. That my friends are my family, my truest beloveds, each relationship a world of its own.”
Read
May 25, 2024There is something specifically insightful (and slightly devastating) about reading this book as a woman who has never had a friendship like the ones explored between the women in this book’s pages. I have 2 incredible sisters, an amazing mom, an extremely lovable grandmother, but I have never had the type of unparalleled attached at the hip type of female friendship that they often show in movies, tv, or books.
There is a underlying hollowness present in my life, and I’m sure many other women’s, in the shape of a female best friend (the one you do everything with, that you tell everything to, go everywhere with) that due to different circumstances in my life, I have never been able to fill. I think this sensation of isolation from a type of friendship that seems quintessential to girlhood and womanhood is extremely under-talked about, despite my knowing of so many women online who feel this alone. There is a stigma of being a woman with no girl best friends, that you are potentially unlikable, unsupportive of others, view yourself as superior; There is the simple unacknowledged causation of this type of unchosen independence: lack of opportunity that has slowly morphed into self isolation. It feels like you’ve missed a train everyone else had this certain someone else get them a ticket for, and you don’t know where to even begin to be allowed on board.
But in no way is this book about me, and I went into it knowing I needed to put my lack out of mind in order to openly welcome the value and uniquely manifested presence of other women’s platonic love.
Lilly chronicles her tumultuous childhood through her friendships: skipping school, drinking and doing drugs, going out to clubs, lounging for hours on the fire escape; trying to be older than she is while still lavishing in the value of her girlhood relationships. Is there any more commonly normalized and advertised part of being a woman than the confidence and company of a group of girlfriends?
In this book, Dancyger unpacks while also processing deep traumas in her life, reminiscing upon the entrance and exits of multiple impactful and deeply important relationships, the priceless girl friends of days past and future. While in the midst of grief for the loss of her cousin, one of her closest, longest, and most cherished friends, Lilly takes this opportunity to deeply reflect and desperately cling to the women in her life, truly the most invaluable relationships you can be granted in this life.
I am grateful to be a spectator of the magic of female friendships, the transformative power they provide to girls who are slowly growing into women and once they become women, the petty triumphs these friendships’ temperamental drama teaches you to overcome, the companionship of women who will catch you when you fall and listen to you when you yap, push you out of your comfort zone but tuck you back in when you need to get that comfort back. Despite my own personal lack of this type of love, a fact that has cornered me into my shell with an isolating vengeance that often no longer lets me hope for this experience, or seek it, I can deeply appreciate this kind of love’s incomparable value when I see it, and despite the fact that this specific kind of love can at this moment never be able to be truly defined, or bottled for me to entirely capture it myself, Dancyger artfully and idiosyncratically eternalizes it’s impact on her in her life so far, and it’s impact upon her is equally heartwarming and heart-wrenching to experience.
There is a underlying hollowness present in my life, and I’m sure many other women’s, in the shape of a female best friend (the one you do everything with, that you tell everything to, go everywhere with) that due to different circumstances in my life, I have never been able to fill. I think this sensation of isolation from a type of friendship that seems quintessential to girlhood and womanhood is extremely under-talked about, despite my knowing of so many women online who feel this alone. There is a stigma of being a woman with no girl best friends, that you are potentially unlikable, unsupportive of others, view yourself as superior; There is the simple unacknowledged causation of this type of unchosen independence: lack of opportunity that has slowly morphed into self isolation. It feels like you’ve missed a train everyone else had this certain someone else get them a ticket for, and you don’t know where to even begin to be allowed on board.
But in no way is this book about me, and I went into it knowing I needed to put my lack out of mind in order to openly welcome the value and uniquely manifested presence of other women’s platonic love.
Lilly chronicles her tumultuous childhood through her friendships: skipping school, drinking and doing drugs, going out to clubs, lounging for hours on the fire escape; trying to be older than she is while still lavishing in the value of her girlhood relationships. Is there any more commonly normalized and advertised part of being a woman than the confidence and company of a group of girlfriends?
In this book, Dancyger unpacks while also processing deep traumas in her life, reminiscing upon the entrance and exits of multiple impactful and deeply important relationships, the priceless girl friends of days past and future. While in the midst of grief for the loss of her cousin, one of her closest, longest, and most cherished friends, Lilly takes this opportunity to deeply reflect and desperately cling to the women in her life, truly the most invaluable relationships you can be granted in this life.
I am grateful to be a spectator of the magic of female friendships, the transformative power they provide to girls who are slowly growing into women and once they become women, the petty triumphs these friendships’ temperamental drama teaches you to overcome, the companionship of women who will catch you when you fall and listen to you when you yap, push you out of your comfort zone but tuck you back in when you need to get that comfort back. Despite my own personal lack of this type of love, a fact that has cornered me into my shell with an isolating vengeance that often no longer lets me hope for this experience, or seek it, I can deeply appreciate this kind of love’s incomparable value when I see it, and despite the fact that this specific kind of love can at this moment never be able to be truly defined, or bottled for me to entirely capture it myself, Dancyger artfully and idiosyncratically eternalizes it’s impact on her in her life so far, and it’s impact upon her is equally heartwarming and heart-wrenching to experience.
June 18, 2024
Bardzo fajne eseje. Przede wszystkim szeroko o kobiecej przyjaźni, ale nie tylko. O różnych konceptach naszych czasów, o matkowaniu i macierzyństwie, o fenomenie sad girl, o żałobie. O true crime, mordercach i ofiarach. O pisaniu jako medium, które nadaje sensu sprawom bezsensownym. O pisaniu jako formie radzenia sobie ze stratą i bólem.
Uwielbiam eseje pisane przez kobiety w podobnym wieku - ta łatwość znalezienia wspólnego pola do rozważań jest bardzo pokrzepiająca. Podyskutowałam sobie trochę w myślach z Lilly w trakcie lektury, co było również przyjemnym, intelektualnym doświadczeniem. Zmieniałam punkt widzenia, otwierałam się na doświadczenia i przemyślenia Lilly i konfrontowałam je ze swoimi. Dobrze napisana, zgrabnie dygresyjna oda do przyjaźni w formie millenialskich esejów. Polecanko!
Uwielbiam eseje pisane przez kobiety w podobnym wieku - ta łatwość znalezienia wspólnego pola do rozważań jest bardzo pokrzepiająca. Podyskutowałam sobie trochę w myślach z Lilly w trakcie lektury, co było również przyjemnym, intelektualnym doświadczeniem. Zmieniałam punkt widzenia, otwierałam się na doświadczenia i przemyślenia Lilly i konfrontowałam je ze swoimi. Dobrze napisana, zgrabnie dygresyjna oda do przyjaźni w formie millenialskich esejów. Polecanko!
July 6, 2024
The relationships of girls and women to each other are often seen as fluff in the margins of the “great hetero love” main story. Lilly Dancyger’s essays give the rose of first love to the girls and women that shaped her life. That rose comes with thorns. The archetypical first love is as euphoric as it is annihilating, and the same can be true in the love of friends, found family and biological family. Dancyger has captured some of the ineffable in her essays on love and loss and creation. This book would make a beautiful gift for the first loves in your life, no matter who they may be.
I received a digital advance reader copy from NetGalley and The Dial Press, an imprint of Random House, in exchange for an honest review.
I received a digital advance reader copy from NetGalley and The Dial Press, an imprint of Random House, in exchange for an honest review.
July 5, 2024
this book has been sitting on my shelf ever since i received my arc copy and i just hadn’t been in the mood to read it. i came on here to read a few goodreads reviews and saw one that said it was a mix between Just Kids and Everything I Know About Love and it immediately convinced me to pick it up. that reviewer could not have been more spot on. this book captured the essence of both of those books and the feelings i had while reading them. i laugh, i cried, i enjoyed every second of this.
add this to your list of books to read in your twenties. right now.
add this to your list of books to read in your twenties. right now.
June 27, 2024
This is a homage to the different types of friendships you experience throughout your life. My eyes teared up at least 4 times while reading this. Loved it.
What I took away from this book; Don’t take your friendships for granted. Know when to move on from certain friendships, even when it’s difficult. Sometimes you grow apart from friends that you had a deep connection with for years. Other friendships last a lifetime.
What I took away from this book; Don’t take your friendships for granted. Know when to move on from certain friendships, even when it’s difficult. Sometimes you grow apart from friends that you had a deep connection with for years. Other friendships last a lifetime.
Read
October 15, 2024asi mi cez oči presakuje láska keď sa mi po líčkach kotúľa kvapka
<3
September 19, 2024
I’ve always felt more at ease around women—more in sync, more intimate. I’ve rivaled them, obsessed over them, learned from them, outgrown them, and sometimes, yes, even hated them. My life is a tapestry of friendships and relationships with women. I’ve fallen in love with some and clashed with others, but each has shaped me. First Love by Lilly Dancyger captures this raw, complex dynamic in a collection of essays that explore the deep bonds, rivalries, and heartbreaks of (female) friendship. It’s the kind of book that makes you nod in recognition, gasp in surprise, and pause to catch your breath as it reflects on the beauty and messiness of these formative connections.
May 25, 2024
To call this a memoir wouldn’t be entirely accurate. This novel reminded me a little of Dolly Alderton’s ‘Everything I Know About Love’. Following along the same tune, Lilly samples every meaningful friendship she’s encounter along the route she calls life.
Within these short stories is a look at female friendship. It’s intimate and unveiling. She was able to put words to feelings I couldn’t describe myself. It was like she had the key to a locked door and through these stories you step inside the secret that is friendship and bonds. Bonds that tie deeper than life and hardships.
It made me cherish my own experiences with people that have ridden hard for me when I couldn’t stand up.
Relationships are complex and at times hard to understand. This short novel was a secret exposure written with intense emotion. Fulfillment at its finest.
[Thank you @thedialpress @lillydancyger for this gifted copy!]
Within these short stories is a look at female friendship. It’s intimate and unveiling. She was able to put words to feelings I couldn’t describe myself. It was like she had the key to a locked door and through these stories you step inside the secret that is friendship and bonds. Bonds that tie deeper than life and hardships.
It made me cherish my own experiences with people that have ridden hard for me when I couldn’t stand up.
Relationships are complex and at times hard to understand. This short novel was a secret exposure written with intense emotion. Fulfillment at its finest.
[Thank you @thedialpress @lillydancyger for this gifted copy!]
May 22, 2024
Unabashed mentions of traveling to "Israel" with no acknowledgment of the occupation of Palestine — hard pass.
December 26, 2023
Lilly, do you need a hug? I want to give you one.
This was so beautifully written. A lot of the messages truly resonated with me since I’m sure we’ve all experienced different types of love that all vary in duration and depth. I didn’t expect the more poignant and bittersweet themes like grief and sadness, but those are so pivotal to the female friendship. I liked how a lot of my grief was verbalized once again.
I applaud this essay compilation.
Thank you, Netgalley and Penguin Random House, for the ARC!
This was so beautifully written. A lot of the messages truly resonated with me since I’m sure we’ve all experienced different types of love that all vary in duration and depth. I didn’t expect the more poignant and bittersweet themes like grief and sadness, but those are so pivotal to the female friendship. I liked how a lot of my grief was verbalized once again.
I applaud this essay compilation.
Thank you, Netgalley and Penguin Random House, for the ARC!
May 3, 2024
These essays are all about the intense, formative friendships you make in adolescence and how oftentimes those relationships are more meaningful than the romantic ones. She covers the loss of friends, found family relationships, and all the messy, complicated things associated with teenage girlhood. I related to this so much and loved reflecting on all the influential memories of my youth.
Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for the advanced reader copy.
Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for the advanced reader copy.
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June 9, 2024There is so much variety here — every time I’d read a new essay I wished there were a whole collection surrounding that topic or form: a collection of cultural criticism interspersed with personal anecdote in the style of “Partner in Crime” and “Sad Girls;” a collection on her kaleidoscopic childhood friendships like “Best Friends Forever;” a collection on the relationship between friendship and art similar to “Portraiture.” The writing is stunning and painful, unveiling clear truths about the nature and evolution of friendships, and I get the feeling this is just one of the dozens of outstanding books Dancyger could write about the subject.
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