Hayley Kiyoko's debut novel explores the crossroads of grief, first love, and starting over in a new town. I think this was a good YA story, and definitely fits well in the genre with other YA contemporary stories. The romance aspect was alright but I honestly wish they hadn't ended up together.

I think that Coley had done so much personal growth, especially with working through her grief and learning to trust her father, that it felt like she had outgrown the infatuation with Sonya. Plus Sonya was honestly so mean to Coley in several chapters throughout the book, and it felt weird to trust her with Coley in the end. But in a way, this ending felt more realistic to high school romances, and so I can understand why it ended that way.

Overall I think it was a pretty solid debut and I would be interested in reading any books she writes in the future.

Girls Like Girls is the novelization of Haley Kiyoko's "Girls Like Girls" music video. I watched it before I read the book and I loved it. It was fun to have a picture of what I was about to get myself into.

I’m always iffy when it comes to celebrities writing novels. I really enjoyed this one though. It was heavy! I was not expecting it to be so sad.

This novel is set in the 2000s and I absolutely loved that. We get two POVs Coley and Sonya. Sonya’s POV is her Livejournal entries and I can’t explain what that did to me. I actually went and found my own LJ profile 🥲

I love that we get to see how hard it is for some people to accept their sexuality. I think it’s so common with young people and not talked about enough. The love story was sweet and I only wish we had gotten more of it.

I highly recommend you listen to the playlist for the book. It helped set the mood.
Overall this was a good coming of age sapphic story.

this book was perfect until the end!!! i wanted an epilogue so badly, it was cut so short i feel! immensely relatable and important read

Oh man I so badly wanted to love this one, just from the author alone. And I definitely enjoyed parts, but it was overall just surface level to me. The characters felt flat and the dialogue was so base level. I do think it had great rep and if you're looking for an easy read, this would be it. I look forward to seeing what Kiyoko does in the future because it's clear she has a passion and is ready to develop it.

Going into this book, I knew little about Hayley Kiyoko, but I did know enough to know she was an actress who also sang Sapphic songs. I hadn't seen the music video of the same name and glanced over the part of the synopsis that said the book was based on the Girls Like Girls music video.

I think Hayley shows tremendous potential as an author. This was her debut, and it was kind of obvious. Coley was more developed than other characters, which made sense because the majority of the book is told from her POV. Sonya, however, wasn't very developed, and her unlikeability stopped me from getting invested into the story.

I did like how the book was set in the 2000s, with the mention of some of my favorite songs from that time frame. It was also fun that Sonya's chapters were told via LiveJournal entries, and the girls talked through instant messenger. It was a unique style that I really liked.

I don't think the book was bad, but it just didn't resonate with me. The pacing was off at times, and I just feel like the book needed a little bit more editing.

Girls Like Girls tells the story of Coley, who is trying to figure out who she is in love and life in the aftermath of a personal tragedy that uproots her entire life just before summer. Forced into a new town, Coley meets a group of friends - and one girl in particular - that makes her question who to trust, her feelings, and who to trust with those feelings. It tells a brave story of someone trying to make it through every day and plan for a future she never asked for or thought she'd have to ask for.

While I enjoyed the premise, this fell short for me. The characters weren't as well-developed as they could have been, and several aspects felt very forced within the characters' personalities. Action was abrupt, without real lead up or build up to support sudden changes or scenes. I had a hard time rooting for everyone - I sympathise or empathise with a lot aspects to some characters, but each one as an individual left something to be desired to me as a reader. What I do think was successful in this book though was the emotion - the absolute torrential downpour of emotions as you work through grief, the return of an absent parent, of questioning your place in the romantic world. That felt real, and I think shows a lot of who Hayley Kiyoko is.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press/Wednesday Books for the egalley.

This was a really good novel for a first time author! However, my issues were with the character Trenton. He was so unlikable that it made reading parts of it not enjoyable..

Coley has to move to a small town in Oregon after her mother dies and live with the father she’s never known. I appreciate that this book is trying to handle a lot of heavy things: mental health issues, parent-child relationship issues, maybe some grief/loss. But overall this was a flop for me.

First of all it’s hard to root for anyone when arguably everyone is kind of a horrible person. Sonya is just a bad person. She treats coley horrible, she’s toxic, even with Trenton she’s toxic, and she’s not likable. I would give someone $5 to point out a redeemable quality that Sonya had. Brooke, SJ, and Trenton were bullies and homophobic and contributed nothing to the plot except to get drunk and make questionable decisions and bully people.
Maybe Alex was ok but he was also a drug dealer because he was poor so why wouldn’t he deal I guess? Blake also made horrible choices and was into drugs and stole things and was, in the end a total douche bag. And then there was coley. Who wants to play the victim a bit and don’t get me wrong she’s been a dealt a bad hand but she’s mean to Curtis for 80% of the book and goes back and forth on if she’s gonna be rude or nice to people on a whim. And in the end just runs back to Sonya anyways.

There are other better coming out stories that don’t revolve around a toxic relationship

3.5 stars. Thank you to NetGalley and Wednesday Books for an eARC of this book. All opinions are my own.

GIRLS LIKE GIRLS is an honest exploration of queerness and identity in the early 2000s. I hadn't watched the MV for Girls Like Girls before reading, but the picture I had in my head was still somehow sepia-toned. This book felt very real, from the setting to the characters, though some fulfilled specific tropes. The book was a bit repetitive in places, and some parts had me groaning, but overall this is a great story about self-discovery, self-acceptance, and grief.

This book really just took me for a ride. I loved the build up, the character development, and the writing. I would definitely read more from this author!

A take on young love tied into the music from Hayley Kiyoko. Super adorable all the way through. Ending was predictable but honestly a good book for what I believe is her first time writing one.

3.5 stars

I have to say, this book ended up being better than I expected it to. When I think about this book as an extended prequel to the music video it exceeds every expectation, but I think that without having that context and that nostalgia, it has a bit more trouble standing on its own.

By absolutely no means do I think this book is bad. I didn't have high expectations for a debut novel written by someone who I wouldn't expect to become an author, but honestly, the writing in the book was far better than I anticipated. It definitely leaned into a lyrical style, and since this book was very dialogue-heavy there were some parts that felt a bit cringy, but on the whole it was nothing I wouldn't expect to see in any YA romance.

While I think the first half of the book was fairly strong with the build-up of Sonya and Coley's relationship, I think things started to unravel in the second half. Considering almost the entirety of the book up until that point was about Coley and Sonya's relationship, I think separating them for most of the second half meant the book lost a lot of momentum and started to feel like it was just filling pages. I hoped that things would get brought back around by the end, but everything ended up feeling rushed and a bit anti-climatic. Getting to see the final scene from the video play out in the book was a nice dose of nostalgia, but ultimately felt out of place for where it was in the book.

Overall, I think this book would have worked a lot better if it had just let itself be the novella it was better suited for than trying to stretch things out into a full book. That said, there were some cute moments, it largely felt like a realistic story of young girls coming to terms with their sexuality, and on the whole reading this felt like something of a gift to my teenage self who watched the music video over and over without understanding why. I think this was a pretty decent book for a debut, and I could see myself reading another book by Hayley if she were to ever write one.

I can’t lie, the best part of this book was the acknowledgments.

Coley has just moved in with her dad. Dad that she barely knows but she doesn't have much of a choice, her mom is gone now and he's all she has left. So she moves to a small town and nothing feels right. She does meet some of the young crowd quite fast though and, especially, Sonya, she has an immediate connection with her and they start to spend so much time together... And what if Sonya felt the same way that Covey does?

I wanted to love this. I thought I would love this.
This is set in 2006 and it kind of felt like it was written then too. The characters were two dimensional and I cannot begin to express how much I hated the love interest. She was the worst. So much gaslighting, so much disrespect, forcing the MC to drink alcohol, to shoplift, her ex-boyfriend who she keeps defending while he's a proper bully (which makes her a bully by association imo.) It was all infuriating. And the mc just takes it in stride and just tells you how much she loves her and the whole time I was like WHY?? It drove me insane. Most of the book is about their "relationship" too, so it was hell. The only part I kind of liked was the relationship between the MC and her dad. I also listened to this and the audio production was infuriating, random noises added at random times, it was so destabilizing. I didn't understand the purpose of it. It made me grate my teeth.
Basically, I sadly cannot recommend this one...

*Thank you for the advanced copy for review.

This one was good, but so heavy. A lot to unpack with the main character on her own and also the love interest on her own. Just so much and it felt like the author didn't have time to finish the story. It needed more.

3.25

This book deserved to be so much more but unfortunately, it left me feeling so conflicted that honestly, I'm not sure if it deserves a lower or higher rating.

It kept me engaged and discussed a lot of great topics, such as coming out, misogyny, "boys will be boys", mental health, and complicated family relationships.

But the writing for a lot of the book was so bad and just was unable to keep myself connected. Sonya was extremely one-dimensional whereas Coley had a lot of depth. I couldn't figure out why Coley even liked Sonya to begin with. We saw a little bit of their friendship but not a ton and Sonya was truly terrible so much. I also don't think that she is that dumb that she truly believes "that's just how all guys are." It's one thing to have a trauma response or rose-tinted glasses, but this was another level.

I'm also sick of writers writing about small towns terribly. I don't know if the author has spent a lot of time in a small town but it felt very out of touch. I shouldn't have to withhold belief so much for a contemporary book. Even in small towns, no 17-year-old boy won't let you put anti-itch cream on if it's pink. He might complain but come on.

Also the ending just killed this for me. I get it, not everything has to have a happy ending, but I feel like there wasn't really a resolve? Personally, I think this would have done far better if it wasn't pushed as a romance book, but instead a story of self-exploration and the story of Coley coming out to her dad and such. Like her relationship with her dad was get (though again, really jumped around sometimes and wasn't super realistic).

Girls like Girls
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⭐️⭐️⭐️
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I have never simultaneously loved a book and hated a book at the same time until I read this book.
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I freaking ADORED the plot! How important of a message to discuss mental health, loss of a parent, and being queer in a small town. It was not your average cute YA Rom-Com. It took a discussed heavy and serious issues.
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BUT OMG THE WRITING WAS SO BAD. I am sorry but it literally was so immaturely written that the parts were painful. Like I totally get we were supposed to hate to douchy ex boyfriend of Sonya, but no 17 year old boy is refusing to put Calamine Lotion on when he has poison oak just because it’s pink. It was just immature writing for a plot that’s so serious.
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It also ended way too abruptly. The climax built so well and when I realized I only had 3 pages left of a resolution I was so confused.
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Would I read a sequel to find out how it continues? Absolutely. Did I devour this book in one afternoon? Yes. But man it was not the best.

Girls Like Girls is the novelization of Haley Kiyoko's famous "Girls Like Girls" music video. A music video that for many in the queer community holds a special place in our hearts. So reading this book was just very exciting to begin with and overall I had a fun time getting to know the characters more.

However, it ended up being kind of a double edged sword because these characters were just so awful to each other most of the time I had a hard time liking them. But queer stories should be allowed to have unlikable, messy characters because we're human too. That being said I felt like it encapsulated being a teenager and all those messy feelings pretty well.

Part of me wishes this had been more focused on the "coming of age" aspect than the romance. I felt that a lot of Coley's trauma was unexplored in favor of her romance with Sonya. That or maybe some of it should've been removed in favor of the romance. Either way both felt underdeveloped which left the ending feeling kind of disappointing.

Despite this I would still recommend the book to YA readers and any Hayley Kiyoko fans (if there are any who haven't read this yet lol). It's a good read and the atmosphere in general does a great job of capturing the vibe of the music.

When Corey’s mom dies, she ends up having to move cross country to live with her absentee dad, who she hasn’t seen since she was three. Her plan is to put her head down, finish school and then get out of there. But things never go to plan. Enter Sonya, the girl Corey finds herself more infatuated with than either of them like to admit. Enter Curtis, the absentee dad who wants to try to fix things and who actually cares. Coley’s summer has gotten a whole lot more complicated.

I actually really liked this! Yes, if you detected surprise in those five words, you are correct. I’m gonna be honest, I went into this expecting to be bored, or even a little annoyed. This is partly because there are always these reports of celebrities writing books when writing is never something they’ve ever before expressed any interest in. I don’t know if this was Kiyoko, but I’m wary of celebrities who suddenly have a book to publish, because was it ghost written? Was it written horribly—really horribly—and then edited five million times after the publishing deal had been made? Or does the celebrity actually have a hidden talent for writing? Hint, it’s rarely the last one. I often feel annoyed at these celebrities getting huge advances for poorly written books when it could go to so many more deserving authors who have made writing their livelihood.

But I truly don’t think this was the case with GIRLS LIKE GIRLS. Was the prose out of this world? No. But it was enjoyable and I found myself absolutely flying through it. I found Coley lovable, and although it slightly annoyed me how she kept going back to Sonya after all the shit she’d pull, I loved their relationship. Their relationship was sweet and wholesome, and I found myself rooting for them. I loved Coley’s budding relationship with her father, and how despite her reservations, he kept trying.

I feel like the only negative thing I have to say about this book is it could have been longer to develop everything outside of Curtis and Sonya. I would have liked to see Alex and Coley talk a bit more, especially about sexuality, and I would have liked to see a bit more of the aftermath from what happened at the end. It felt it lacked in some places, bits where I wanted more. I wanted to see more of Coley and Sonya together as a couple, rather than just sneaking around not entirely sure what they’re doing.

All in all, I liked this more than I thought I would. I definitely watched the video a few times while reading this and I Get it now. I Get it.

Thank you, Netgalley, for an e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

This really just didn’t do a lot for me, but I’m glad it exists. I obviously love Hayley Kiyoko and am thrilled that she’s writing books (and hope she writes a lot more).

I do think this would appeal to high school aged readers more — but there was too much drama and not enough compelling characters.

Sometimes celebrity written books are vanity projects to earn extra cash. I don't get that feeling from this book at all. Kiyoko is cementing her skills as a solid writer beyond her musical abilities.

Thank you to St. Martin's Press, Wednesday Books, and NetGalley for providing an eARC for an honest review.