In the second season of the popular comedy TV show, Parks and Recreation, leading lady Leslie Knope coordinates a brunch for all of the ladies in her life that she loves and supports. Since this episode aired, popular culture has taken the idea and run with it. Feb. 13 is unofficially Galentines day! A day to celebrate and appreciate the women who support you in your life.
Check out a new book about the joys and complications of female friendships to celebrate Galentine's day on Feb. 13.
- YA Fiction
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A Song Below Water: A Novel / Bethany C. Morrow
In a society determined to keep her under lock and key, Tavia must hide her siren powers. Meanwhile, Effie is fighting her own family struggles, pitted against literal demons from her past. Together, these best friends must navigate through the perils of high school's junior year. But, everything changes in the aftermath of a siren murder trial that rocks the nation, and Tavia accidentally lets out her magical voice at the worst possible moment. Soon, nothing in Portland, Oregon, seems safe. To save themselves from drowning, it's only Tavia and Effie's unbreakable sisterhood that proves to be the strongest magic of all.
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Clover City High School in Texas has a clear social hierarchy: football on top, dance team members next, then everyone else. Junior Millie Michalchuk, who also appeared in Murphy's Dumplin', may be a lifer at fat camp, but that doesn't mean she buys into how the world sees her. Callie Reyes dates a football player and is on course to become dance team captain. The girls' paths rarely cross. Then the dance team loses its funder, a gym owned by Millie's uncle, and its members break in and trash the business. When a sulky Callie starts working at the gym, Millie models not just friendship and forgiveness, but also tough-love examples of how to treat people. Through the girls' alternating perspectives, Murphy develops their aspirations and struggles: Millie isn't sure how to pursue her dream of being a TV anchor; Mexican-American Callie experiences stereotyping and yearns for friends, not frenemies.
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This is All Your Fault / Aminah Mae Safi
A trio of unlikely friends rally their Chicago community to save a beloved independent bookstore in Safi's (Tell Me How You Really Feel) quirky offering. When the staff of Wild Nights Bookstore and Emporium discovers that the shop is closing in just two weeks, they each try to find a way to prevent its going under, from flipping $9,000 worth of Air Jordans to crunching suspicious inventory numbers and breaking the strictly enforced "no photography, no phones" rule. The store unites its teenage co-workers: bubbly bookstagrammer Rinn Olivera, who is biracial (of Mexican and German descent), is perpetually camera ready; sarcastic bleached blonde Daniella Korres, who is white, secretly shares poetry online; and Lebanese American Imogen Azar is adept at hiding her inner turmoil. As they're pushed to their limits with planning, mourning the loss of an institution while assisting customers, and dealing with an entitled popular author, each begins to appreciate and better understand the others, seeing beyond superficial assumptions.
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The Deepest Roots / Miranda Asebedo
Cottonwood Hollow, Kansas, is a strange place. For the past century, every girl has been born with a special talent, like the ability to fix any object, heal any wound, or find what is missing. To best friends Rome, Lux, and Mercy, their abilities often feel more like a curse. Rome may be able to fix anything she touches, but that won't help her mom pay rent or make it easier to confide in Lux and Mercy about what's going on at home. Lux's ability to attract any man with a smile has always meant danger. And although Mercy can make enough of whatever is needed, even that won't help when her friendship with Rome and Lux is tested. As Rome struggles to keep her friendships close, she discovers the truth about life in Cottonwood Hollow, that friends are stronger than curses, that trust is worth the risk, and sometimes what you've been looking for has been under your feet the whole time.
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Scars Like Wings / Erin Stewart
t's been a year since high school junior Ava escaped the fire that left her badly burned and took the lives of her closest loved ones: both her parents and her cousin Sarah. Nineteen surgeries later, Ava still feels as if she looks like a "monster," but her doctor and new guardians, Sarah's grieving parents, think it's time she return to school. Unable to face her old friends, Ava enrolls in a different school, where she's fully prepared for cruel reactions to her appearance. What she doesn't expect to find are two companions who refuse to let her retreat into isolation: Piper, a fellow burn survivor who harbors a secret, and Pakistani-American Asad, who shares Ava's passion for theater. Together, they coax Ava into auditioning for the school play and letting her talents shine. First-time author Stewart writes a sensitively handled story filled with relatable, three-dimensional characters. Without sugarcoating or overdramatizing her protagonists' circumstances, she focuses on the internal challenges of survivors profoundly affected by trauma.
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It's been a year and a half since the Raxter School for Girls was ravaged by the Tox, a sickness that crept in slowly through the woods before distorting the bodies of the teachers and students in vicious ways, leaving them wilted and blackened when it was finished. Left with the promise of a cure, the quarantined girls watch out for one another. That's precisely what Hetty is doing when her friend Byatt disappears, and together with her friend Reese, she breaks quarantine to penetrate the wild beyond the fence to find her. At the same time, they navigate their fragile, maybe even brittle, relationship that's strained by the complicated, desolate circumstances. Power's mesmerizing novel is touched with eerie moments of body horror—a stitched-up eye with something lurking underneath, a second protruding spine, animals growing three times their size. Those moments pale in comparison to the savagery of the Tox, however: It made them stick each other in the main hall during dinner, made them watch themselves bleed dry.
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When You Were Everything / Ashley Woodfolk
Cleo makes all the wrong choices, but she aches to be wanted despite her mistakes. So when her ex–best friend Layla makes friends with the popular choir girls, Cleo finds herself lashing out, only for it to backfire in the worst of ways. Eventually, the two decide that the friendship is irreparable, forcing Cleo to reevaluate just how fiercely she loves and to reflect on the ways she refuses the love of those around her. That describes the plot sequentially, but Woodfolk's novel moves back and forth through a short, occasionally overlapping time frame, documenting how actions of even the smallest size can end with catastrophic results.
- YA Graphic Novels
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Lumberjanes. Volume 1, Beware the Kitten Holy / written by Noelle Stevenson & Grace Ellis
The Lumberjanes—Jo, Molly, Mal, April, and Ripley—all attend a summer camp for "hard-core lady-types" headed up by a Rosie-the-Riveter lookalike who's surprisingly lenient when it comes to late-night sojourns into the woods to follow ghostly bearwomen. In a series of adventures, all of which exasperate the girls' beleaguered cabin leader, the girls use both their ample brains and pure brawn to defeat three-eyed foxes, a river monster, some talking statues, and a pack of finicky yetis. It's not totally clear where the quests are leading them, but that hardly matters, since each adventure is packed with manic cartoon antics, particularly when Ripley, in spite of her tiny size, literally hurls herself at obstacles. There are plenty of comic-book series with this brand of madcap enthusiasm, but Lumberjanes is the only one so dedicated to feminism in such a lighthearted way.
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This One Summer / Mariko Tamaki, Jillian Tamaki
Rose and Windy, friends for two weeks every summer in nearby Ontario lake cottages, have hit early adolescence. Rose, a bit older, has knowledge and polish that tubby, still-childish Windy lacks, and Windy sometimes bores her. Yet Windy's instincts are often sound, while Rose is led astray by an infatuation with a local convenience store clerk. As Rose's parents' marriage founders and the taunts of local teens wake her to issues of social class, Rose veers between secret grief and fleeting pleasure in the rituals of summer.
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Surviving the City / Tasha Spillett; Natasha Donovan
A poignant look at the lives of two best friends, Miikwan and Dez. Miikwan is Anishinaabe; Dez is Inninew. Being Indigenous, they belong to one of the most marginalized populations in Canada, and every day they face the risk of experiencing violence, going missing, or even being murdered. Miikwan's mother is already missing, and Dez is worried about where she will live now that her grandmother has become too ill to be her guardian. Despite all their hardships, the teens endeavor to honor their cultures and navigate an unsafe urban environment. The main characters in this graphic novel are so expressive and authentic, it's impossible not to care for them.
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Séance Tea Party / Reimena Yee
Lora Xi has a fantastic imagination. She loves playing pretend, dressing up, and anything to do with Halloween—she even had an imaginary friend when she was younger. Unfortunately, as Lora's real friends grow up and no longer care to play with her like they used to, Lora is afraid to change along with them. While hosting a pretend séance tea party for her stuffed animals, she summons Alexa, the ghost that used to be her imaginary friend. They rekindle their friendship, and as the school year progresses, Alexa helps Lora make friends and try new things, and, using the newfangled internet, Alexa begins to discover who she was when still alive.
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What if We Were ... / Axelle Lenoir
Best friends Marie and Nathalie only compete in their expressive imaginations while playing the game "What If." In a series of engaging vignettes, they ponder various "what if" scenarios, from becoming superheroines to ninjas to Vikings. Although Marie is outgoing and Nathalie a bit more sarcastic and reserved, they overlap with a love of nerdy pop culture, and Lenoir's artwork cleverly recalls their favorite movies, television, and comics. The comic follows them to school and through their general hangouts, but its focus is on Marie and Nathalie's creative capacity through their "what if" game.
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A Map to the Sun / Sloane Leong
Five teenage girls, isolated by their personal struggles, find the strength to cope through a newly formed high school basketball team. Ren's parents are divorced, and her delinquent sister attracts trouble. Luna's mom just died. Nell has low confidence and a negative body image. Jetta's abusive household drives her to smoking, cutting, and a romance with a misogynistic teacher. Introverted So feels ignored and unseen. When an optimistic coach pulls them together, they clash even as they gel and ultimately find solace in their friendships. While basketball plays a prominent role, this book is far less concerned with the sport than the relationships and mental health of its characters.
- Non-Fiction Finds
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This feminist anthology covers women doing awesome things across different time periods, including contemporary squads like Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan. The book is divided into sections featuring athletes, political and social activists, artists, warriors, and scientists. The chapters aren't long—about 10 pages each. Maggs's writing style is familiar and informal and often times humorous. (On why a Scottish school didn't want to admit female students: "They also argued that the presence of female students would be distracting and tempting, which sounds like a case of That's your problem,' but, you know, whatever.")
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Part memoir, part guidebook, this author, drawing on her popular blog and podcast, shares personal stories and offers reflective questions that will guide you into cultivating the authentic connection with others that only comes from sharing yourself.
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Girl Talk: What Science Can Tell us About Female Friendship / Jacqueline Mroz
Mroz takes a new look at how friendship has evolved throughout history, showing how friends tend to share more genetic commonalities than strangers, and that the more friends we have, the more empathy and pleasure chemicals are present in our brains. Scientists have also reported that friendship directly influences health and longevity; women with solid, supportive friendships experience fewer "fight or flight" impulses and stronger heart function, and women without friendships tend to develop medical challenges on par with those associated with smoking and excessive body weight.
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Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close / Aminatou Sow, Ann Friedman.
Sow and Friedman set the tone for their study of Big Friendship—"a bond of great strength, force, and significance that transcends life phases, geographical locations, and emotional shifts"—with a frank and vulnerable episode: years into their own Big Friendship, they booked a spa weekend together in hopes of bridging a painfully growing distance between them. It didn't work. The authors and podcasters behind the popular Call Your Girlfriend then kick it back to their origin story as fast friends who met at a Gossip Girl watch party. They intertwine the story and lessons of their relationship with research about friendship (noting the predominant cultural emphasis on romantic and family relationships). They give airtime to topics like the importance of "stretching" for one another, the special challenge of interracial friendship, and the "too big to fail" myth they had to let go of. This is an instructive, humbling, and reassuring guidebook to Big Friendship in all its hard work and outsize glory; through both tears and laughter, readers will see themselves in it, and be glad.
Descriptions adapted from the publisher.
