"Girls Like Girls" by Hayley Kiyoko takes readers on a heartwarming journey of self-discovery and love. At the heart of the story is Coley, a 17-year-old who finds herself grappling with the recent loss of her mother, thrusting her into a new environment and leaving her vulnerable and uncertain. Kiyoko's portrayal of Coley's emotional journey is incredibly poignant, allowing readers to connect deeply with her vulnerability and doubts.

When Coley crosses paths with Sonya, an immediate connection ignites. Kiyoko masterfully weaves their relationship, capturing the exhilaration, tenderness, and uncertainty of first love. Coley's doubts about her own worthiness of love and Sonya's journey as someone who has never been with a girl before add layers of depth and authenticity to their evolving connection.

Set in a small town in Oregon, this book beautifully explores the challenges of teenage life and the courage it takes to embrace one's true self. With relatable characters and a celebration of LGBTQ+ experiences, Kiyoko's storytelling captures the essence of love and acceptance. "Girls Like Girls" was a captivating read.

Based on the billboard-charting smash hit song and viral music video GIRLS LIKE GIRLS, Hayley Kiyoko's debut novel is about embracing your truth and realizing we are all worthy of being loved back.

Listen, go ahead and go watch the video before you pick up this book. I'll wait.

https://youtu.be/I0MT8SwNa_U

My teenage self would have fully devoured Girls Like Girls. It has some heavy themes but the story itself is pretty simplistic. And a lot of it is Coley's inner dialog. The story also takes you right back in time to first crushes and summer love. Fans of Hayley's and coming-of-age stories will definitely still enjoy it. Just don't expect anything groundbreaking (like the video was).

I very much recommend the audiobook and it's cast of narrators. Brandon Flynn, Hayley Kiyoko, Katie Gavin, Malia Pyles, and Natalie Naudus are all fabulous.


***Thank you to Netgalley, Macmillan Audio, and Wednesday Books for providing me with a review copy.***

I really hate to say this because it's Hayley Kiyoko, but I couldn't get through this book all the way. The protagonist's voice irritated me to the point that I was completely taken out of the story.

Hayley Kiyoko's debut novel, based on her hit song and viral video "Girls Like Girls," tells a coming-of-age romance set against the backdrop of a small town in rural Oregon. In this story, 17-year-old Coley, grappling with loss and self-doubt, meets Sonya and finds an immediate attraction. The book explores themes of self-worth, fear, and acceptance. However, despite the promise of an engaging narrative, I found the writing style to be a significant barrier to my enjoyment. As a debut novel, I understand that Kiyoko's main focus lies in her successful music career, but unfortunately, the book suffers from poor writing quality. As a fan of young adult novels, I was disappointed by the overall lack of polish and struggled to connect with the story.

Overall, I would rate this book two out of five stars. While the premise holds potential, the writing style prevented me from fully immersing myself in the story. Readers looking for a well-crafted young adult novel may find themselves similarly unable to enjoy this particular offering. Nonetheless, it's worth noting that individual preferences can vary, so fans of Hayley Kiyoko's music might appreciate the book for its connection to her hit song and music video, even if the writing falls short.

A pretty accurate story about teen girls in the time period its set in! It's interesting that the same qualities that made the song and music video so excellent make this novelization a little bit of a slog—the universality of the feelings expressed in those translate to a novel that's full of a lot of trite clichés. I also wish we'd got more epilogue! I know that's a bit "The meal was terrible and there was so little of it!", so obviously the cliches didn't hinder my experience that much.

Thank you to NetGalley, author Hayley Kiyoko, and St. Martin's Press-- Wednesday Books for providing me with a free ARC in exchange for my honest opinion!

I absolutely adore Hayley Kiyoko as a singer and actress. I have been a fan of hers for years, and I was so excited when I found out she was writing a book. This was a fine read, but unfortunately, I was personally a bit disappointed by it. I wasn't expecting the book to be set in 2006, and I would love to know the reasoning for that choice because some of the things I didn't like about the book were centered around that fact, such as extra pressure to be closeted because less accepting times. I didn't always believe the chemistry between the characters, and it was a bit melodramatic in parts, but I think my interpretation of that is simply because I'm above the target reader's age. I did think the writing was great, and it's a very well thought out novel, so major props to Kiyoko for that! I would have just liked to see more about Coley's mom/the relationship with her and even some of the side characters, like Alex, rather than just so many mentions of drinking and smoking weed. I'm definitely not straight-laced, but it just seemed a bit of overkill with how much the characters were either under the influence or talking about being high/drunk. I would have enjoyed seeing the characters function more outside of that as well, as it led to a lot of conflict in the book. Overall, this was just okay for me, but I would be interested in seeing what Kiyoko writes in the future-- especially if she aged the characters up a bit for a more adult audience!

I knew Hayley Kioko was a poet from her amazing music, but reading her book made me realize what a great storyteller she is. Girls Like Girls - the book - gave me the very same feelings the song by the same name gave me, back when I first heard it and when I first watched the music video.

I loved the characters and how real they felt, I loved the pace of the romance, the thrills of new situations, the fear of the forbidden, the angst. A true celebration of sapphic love and live.

I really hope Hayley writes more books, I’m looking forward to reading anything she writes.

thank you to netgalley for my advances reader copy of Girls like Girls!

For the most part, I enjoyed this story. It took me a while to get through because the middle felt a bit long, but overall this is a quiet story about young adult grief, identity, parental relationships and falling in love that takes place over a summer.

Coley moves to this small town to live with her estranged dad after her mom passes away (tw for death of a parent and suicide) and meets Sonya and Sonya’s group of friends. She and Sonya fall in love and have to learn how to accept and live with their identities and ultimately choose to be together.

There were a few flaws with the book for me. Technically speaking, I could tell this was an early (first) novel for someone because I wasn’t super impressed with the writing, but I think Hayley could get to a place of being a great storyteller if she chooses to write more novels. So this isn’t that big of a deal to me.

I also felt that none of the characters (Coley especially) really had much growth during the course of the novel. For Sonya, it seems like she grew a bit more and love won for her in the end because she wanted to be with Coley and stopped focusing so much on the fact that she liked girls.

I love Hayley Kiyoko as a person and her music and am still excited to see her put out a YA novel. Overall, i recommend the read if you enjoy YA novels and I hope to see her write more and grow in the future!

Let me start off by saying the Girls Like Girls 2015 music video changed the way I saw myself as a confused, bisexual teenager. I’m a HUGE fan of Hayley Kiyoko and I think will always be - so it really bums me out that this debut novel fell short for me in so many ways.

At this point, I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m not much of a YA reader, BUT I can still definitely appreciate a good YA story. The writing in Girls Like Girls was not only elementary, but honestly plain bad. There was so much telling VS showing with these characters that you never truly get a good grasp of who these people really are. You definitely feel sympathy for Coley, as the internalized homophobia and trauma from her family’s past is eating at her, but it’s almost HARD to empathize with her? Because she isn’t even fleshed out enough. And I feel like we only ever see Sonya through Coley’s rose colored lenses OR Sonya’s private journal entries - BOTH OF WHICH definitely don’t match up to Sonya’s actions/overall behavior? She was SO frustrating as a love interest because there’s no redemption? There’s obvious tension written in but I never felt it.

And with all YAs, there’s always a sense of naive absoluteness to everything, but without a true grasp of the characters, it just feels cringey and silly. It makes the trauma feel so surface level, which is a total injustice to both Coley’s self inflicted hatred and Sonya’s internal struggle with the societal pressure to be “perfect.” The ending was just so fast. The entire book feels very rushed, as things progress fast without much time passing at all, but then all of a sudden things are awful horrible bad then great okay lovely. I got whiplash in the last 5% of this book?! And it doesn’t quite feel like a happy ending, I think there is so much that’s glossed over and unfinished that I don’t want to call this a healthy partnership at all.

What’s tough about this is that I honestly REMEMBER feeling the way Coley and Sonya were feeling when I was struggling to define my own sexuality as a teenager. Some of the stuff in this book tugged at my past self’s 16 year old heartstrings, so I know that with some heavy editing and more precise storytelling, this book could have been really good. The way I feel rubbed raw when I watch the Girls like Girls music video - EVEN YEARRRSS LATER - blows my mind and shows me how strong of a musician and artist Hayley Kiyoko is. But this novel unfortunately feels like it missed a lot of marks, technically and lyrically.

4.5 ⭐️ I really really enjoyed this🥺 I’m not usually one for high school romance but I love a good coming of age story and this one really did it for me!

Coley just moved to a new town to live with her estranged father after her mother passed away. She meets a group of friends who invite her to hang out and ends up connecting with Sonya the most out of all of them. They spend a lot of time just the two of them and their friendship progresses to something more, but Sonya gets scared just as everything starts to change.

I connected with this a lot and especially with Coley. This was so full of angst and teenage drama but also lots of real life troubles too. Check TWs - specifically suicide/mental illness discussions - it gets a little heavy at times and I felt so much of the emotion. It’s sapphic, high school aged, coming of age/coming out, self discovery & acceptance, grief. I absolutely loved that this was set in the early 2000s and they chatted on AIM, brought me right back 😂 I also really liked that even though it was just in Coley’s perspective, we got to see Sonya’s side of things through her private posts online too. Her mending the relationship with her dad was heartbreaking yet so sweet at the same time 😭 The only thing I wish was different was the ending, it felt so abrupt and there was no epilogue 🥲 but besides that and overall, I really did love it 🥹

Girls Like Girls is a queer, coming-of-age novel written by the amazingly talented pop star and lesbian icon Hayley Kiyoko. This story follows Coley, a teenage girl who just moved to a new town and is dealing with family trauma and discovering who she is. Coley meets a group of kids in her town, including the popular Sonya, who she immediately falls for. The two enter an extremely complicated friendship that eventually becomes something more.

Something I really enjoyed about this novel is how similar it is to Hayley Kiyoko's music video of the same name. There were specific scenes in the book that I immediately connected to the video, and it made it all that more special. She also wove in other elements from her career, with a reference to her song "Cliff's Edge" and even a nod to being called Lesbian Jesus.

This novel was extremely fast-paced, and sometimes I wish it would have taken the time to slow down a little bit, especially towards the end. The final party scene, which is derived directly from the aforementioned music video, could have used a little bit more action and depth. Characters, however, especially Coley and Sonya, were very well-developed and fit the plot well.

Overall, I found this story very enjoyable, and loved being able to connect it back to the music video that inspired it. I hope Hayley will continue writing, or at least turn this into a full-length film someday!

A massive thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press - Wednesday Books for this advance reader copy.

content warnings (please note i may have missed some): grief following death of parent by suicide, homophobia (external & internal), underage drinking and drug use

after losing her mom, coley is forced to move to a small town in oregon with a father she does not know. there, she meets sonya, who she’s attracted to, but she’s not sure how sonya feels.

one thing that surprised me is that this book was set in 2006. i don’t think the book would’ve been super different if it had been set now instead, but i did like the element of the blogging, which wouldn’t have worked as well had it been set now.

i liked the exploration of first love and how tricky it can be. i didn’t really find anything wrong with coley, but sonya definitely had her problems, especially internalized homophobia. i liked how this was all explored and how her growth played out.

Many thanks to NetGalley, St. Martin's Press, and Wednesday Books for providing me with an eARC of Girls Like Girls in exchange for my honest review!

Before I give my review, I must preface that I don't listen to Hayley Kiyoko's music, so I don't have the personal connection with her work, particularly "Girls Like Girls" and its music video, that other readers will. That being said, I ended up liking this book, even though things could get rocky. The beginning, for example, deploys the insta-love trope for the central romance, and insta-love isn't something that I'm all too keen to consume. Then as I dived deeper into the story, I realized it wasn't going to be the easygoing teen romance that I'd expected it to be. Nope, it gets heavy and it's dealing with messy-ass youths, so I had to shift into a different reading mood in order to be able to enjoy it as much as possible. Once that happened about halfway through the story, I got more satisfaction out of it, even when the writing was feeling corny and unpolished. But it can get quite touching, too, and I liked Kiyoko's choice to set this against the nostalgic backdrop of 2006.

Overall, I'm officially rating Girls Like Girls 3.25 out of 5 stars, then rounding it down to 3 stars. It didn't amaze me, but I'm glad I picked it up, and I'd be interested to see if Kiyoko will write any more books in the future.

I wanted to love this book SO much! the yearning, the pinning the 2006 vibes with livejournal and AIM... but it seemed to fall flat in SO many ways - especially how toxic Sonya and her friends were.

So much of sapphic media revolves around one girl being toxic and the other romanticizing it even when it hurts them so much and this book does just that. Coley opens up to her and Sonya immediately ghosts because she's so in the closet but instead of talking about their feelings she leads her on and gaslights her about their relationship as a whole.

Meanwhile Coley is finally moving on and getting closer to her dad (LOVE Curtis - he was really the highlight of the book!) and I was hoping and praying that it would lead to her saying goodbye to Sonya and finding someone that actually wants to be with her.

alas no - Coley gets hate crimed and that spurs Sonya into wanting her back - a trope which I hated SOOOO much. I really wished this story had ended with her just walking away.

This was a perfectly acceptable first book for a new author. That being said, it wasn't a fantastic book. I think there were a few things that were shoehorned in for fans of the author (lesbian Jesus anyone?) that feel out of place if someone were to pick this up without knowing about those inside jokes. Overall, this was just ok.

I really liked this, While stories of queer love and joy without homophobia is a breath of fresh air and essential, it is also important for stories where homophobia both external and internal are aspects of self realization to be told as well. Especially with what is going on in the world now. And for me as a baby Gen Xer, this more closely represented my own experience. So I really identified with Sonya's confusion and appreciated her LiveJournal entries scattered throughout. I really felt for Coley too and everything she was going through. This is a debut and of course it's not without its criticisms, however I felt it was done well. I would definitely read more from Kiyoko.

This book had a lot going on. The main character is dealing with the death of her mom while also falling in love with a girl who isn’t out. There’s drugs and alcohol mentioned frequently for a young adult book. Also violence and cruelty. Wasn’t my cup of tea and could be triggering for young adults who have experienced similar traumas.

Girls Like Girls is based on the iconic music video and song from Hayley Kiyoko. I was immediately drawn in by the gorgeous cover. The story follows Coley and Sonya, with Coley forced to live with her estranged father after the death of her mother. Coley must wrestle with romantic feelings about Sonya, as Sonya must decide whether she accepts herself. There are no easy answers and the girls must choose whether they can continue their friendship/relationship…

The story felt very surface-level. I struggled with the lack of depth in both plot and characters. While Coley absolutely had tragic things happen in her backstory, they felt a little underdeveloped. If you’ve seen the music video, you’ll have a good idea of where the story is going. However, the pacing felt a bit off as the climatic moment occurs and then the book wraps up. I would have expected more about what happens next or what happens between them in the future.

I enjoyed the relationship between Coley and her dad. It was nice to see Coley form genuine connections outside of her somewhat toxic friendships and relationship. Girls Like Girls has an important message about being true to yourself and not worrying about the expectations of others. I do think this book will really mean a lot to some readers, especially those who love the titular music video and song.

Thank you to Hayley Kiyoko, Wednesday Books, and Netgalley for a free ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Girls Like Girls is a phenomenal coming of age sapphic romance. The book follows Coley, the new girl in town who just moved in with the father she never knew after her mother dies, and Sonya, the dancer who has never been with a girl before. The story is based on the author, Hayley Kiyoko’s song of the same title and it follows the girls as they face their fears about love and learn that they are worth love. Neither of the girls grew up with parents who had a successful marriage, which tarnishes their ideas of love and prevents them from seeing that they are not only capable of it, but deserve to be loved.

In all, this was a fun, quick read that kept me entertained the entire way through and I would love to see a second book from this author.

Thank you to NetGalley, Hayley Kiyoko, St. Martin’s Press, and Wednesday Books for the digital ARC of this book.

The story is clearly crafted to build a narrative around the song and music video of the same title but overall I enjoyed it. The tone doesn't feel heavy while dealing with themes of grief, coming of age, and internalized homophobia. The characters feel rounded and authentic. The typical small-town American story of sex, drugs, and alcohol with a healthy dose of teenagers making reactive decisions is a little over done and did a lot of the heavy lifting when it came to characters and setting. Often the character descriptions and scene settings were sparse or non-existent and could use some work in future books. Overall there were a lot of good story points but they don’t all smoothly go together as they felt contrived for Coley’s growth rather than natural. There’s a lot of potential here for a debut book from a new author.