This is such a beautiful coming-of-age story that is so nuanced and tender it made my heart hurt. Hannah is a lesbian teenager growing up in 1990s Long Island who is just starting to come to terms with her queerness. She and her best friend Sam are in love but feel like they can't be themselves if they stay home. They move to San Francisco when they graduate high school, but once they get there, they find it impossible to get jobs and find an apartment. They start working at a strip club, and Sam thrives but Hannah finds it super uncomfortable. Sam and Hannah start to drift apart as they enter different queer circles, and it's so deeply relatable and lovely.

I loved every moment of this. We immediately understand Hannah's voice and her deep attachment to Sam, and it's clear from the beginning how Hannah's identity is so bound up in Sam but Sam is also her family and she can't be without her. I loved the way this book interrogated our preconceptions about sex workers and showed how difficult it is to carve out your own space when you don't really know who you are. I was so invested in this story the whole way through, and I'll be thinking about it for a while.

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Group - Putnam for an advance reader's copy in exchange for an honest review!

I just wrapped up *Girls Girls Girls* by Shoshana von Blanckensee, and honestly—it’s a vibrant, funny, and smart read that I couldn’t put down. The way von Blanckensee captures the chaos and joy of friendship feels so real, like you’ve slipped into a group chat full of inside jokes and big dreams. I loved how the book is both hilarious and heartfelt, balancing snappy wit with genuine emotional moments that sneak up on you. The characters felt like people I’d want to hang out with—even when they’re making brilliantly questionable decisions, I’ve got to root for them. There's this great tension between plotting your future and holding onto the messiness of youth that von Blanckensee nails in a way that’s both poignant and hilarious. I also appreciated how the setting and cultural nuances are woven in authentically, giving the story an extra layer of charm and depth. Overall, if you’re looking for a story about love, friendship, and growing up with a wicked sense of humor behind it all, this one’s an absolute winner.

'Where is home? It’s nowhere, which means it could be anywhere. It’s wherever I am. I’m home.'

oh queer coming of age stories you WILL be the death of me.

GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS by Shoshana von Blanckensee was an immediate "must read" for me, especially because of the 1996 San Francisco setting. The world of this book felt very grounded and real; it was easy to picture all of the locations. The San Francisco descriptions were so nostalgic, a glimpse into a city that no longer exists in the way it did in 1996.

Another key reason I wanted to read this book is because the characters work at a strip club. Hannah does particularly well there and does not show any shame about it. That's extremely refreshing. It's rare to read characters who strip and even rarer to read about characters who strip and do not have issues with addiction, self-esteem, trauma, etc.

Sam tries stripping and does not like it. She falls into a depression, which seems less related to stripping and escort/stripping work and more to do with struggling to find her place--and her people--in San Francisco. She lights up once she works with the queer work crew.

Although it's difficult to read, it makes sense that Hannah and Sam drift apart, and it's very rooted in character. I wanted to savor every page, but found myself rushing to find out what would happen to the two main characters. I will be re-reading it to savor the world and characters!

I loved it. There were several times where I had to pause and take in the turn of phrase I had just read. Just a really well done coming-of-age story.

This book wrecked me in the best way, and is an instant favorite. I resonated so deeply with Hannah as she navigated life in a new city, discovering and embracing her queerness, experiencing first love and heartbreak, complicated and tense family dynamics, and ultimately, her grief, among so much more. The story gripped me from the beginning and I feel like I lived a whole life reading this book, but none of it was ever boring. Heart wrenching, had me crying in one chapter and then giggling and kicking my feet in the next. I can’t recommend this enough.

Thank you to NetGalley for giving me an e-ARC copy in exchange for an honest review. (The book is out now since I took my sweet time absorbing this one).

Girls Girls Girls is an outstanding coming-of-age novel. In the novel, we follow Hannah, a young Jewish woman and closeted lesbian, who graduates high school and immediately drives cross country with her best friend and girlfriend, Sam, to San Francisco. There, Hannah and Sam begin to strip to make enough money to live in San Francisco.

Hannah was such an original character, and I was rooting for her along the way. I struggled a lot with Sam, which I believe was intentional, but detracted a bit from my enjoyment. However, I adored the ending so much.

The 90's queer coming of age story you've been looking for! This was so great! The characters are fantastic and you can't help but root for them to make it. It's all about found family but also finding who you are within a community and how you can get into messy situations trying to survive a world that doesn't accept you.

I truly think that some lines of this book have been burned into my brain. Wow wow wow wow wow!!! I felt like a part of me grew up alongside Hannah.

I feel so much love in this book. It uncoils and stretches itself over you in ways you don't expect. It's so honest and youthful—I'm young, and I can see the free way of thinking that comes with being even younger. In moments like this, after reading the book, I want to cling to it with white knuckles. It feels like a real depiction of life, how it can be so messy and complicated. This book is about Hannah, and after her high school graduation, she embarks on a journey. She leaves behind her overbearing mother, caring older sister, lifelong friend April, and beloved Bubbe and heads west to California with Sam, her best friend and girlfriend, to be young, free, and in love. Being from the East Coast, I can't even imagine just getting in a van and driving cross-country with no real secure plan. Yet, if I think about being 18 again, it all makes so much sense. There are so many relationships you navigate in this book, and each one feels so full, so complicated, and so very human. There were some instances where the choices some characters made were so hard to read. You learn to love these characters and see yourself in them, so when mistakes are made, it feels so personal. Being young and queer leaves you with questions that seem impossible to answer, but I find that in simple moments, the answers just come. At different points, while reading, I found it amusing how sometimes I would highlight a sentence, and then it would be reiterated; I felt in sync with her thinking, which made me feel even closer to the characters. I didn't grow up with a Bubbe, especially Hannah's, but I think I will carry her voice with me when I need to be brave. I’ll leave you with two of my favorite quotes from the author.

“But bravery is a muscle, Hannah,” she says, gesturing for me to turn off the water and hand her a towel. “Stronger every time you use it. You are brave too, shefele. You’ve always been brave. Certainly braver than you can see right now. When you’re older you will look back at this time in your life, and then you will be able to see yourself very clearly. You will say, How on earth did I get all that chutzpah?”
“Maybe when you aren’t alone in your queerness, queerness is thicker than water.”

4.5 stars.

Woowwww this just brought me to tears!

This book was a stunning portrait of coming-of-age queerness in the early 90’s. Our main character Hannah is from a New York suburb, and is a closeted lesbian high schooler with an orthodox Jewish family, an overbearing/protective/emotionally dismissive mother, older sister, and a beautiful relationship with her Bubbe. She decides to move to San Francisco with her best friend, and first love, Sam, leaving New York, their families, and hopefully a closeted life behind them. But quickly, they realize that life in a city without financial stability isn’t easy, and they are forced into sex work- both dancing at a club nearby, an eventually Hannah becoming an escort. It also explores their eventual falling out, the growing pains of coming into yourself, and how to rectify a painful, complex, and needed relationship with a family that might not accept you, a religion you no longer feel connected to, and the life you left behind.

This book was sensational in how it describes that push and pull you can feel in your early 20’s of wanting to be far away from your family and a small town that feels oppressive and constricting, but also feeling so separate from everything you know that you no longer recognize yourself. It dives deep into the complicated feelings that come with grief, loss, mother/daughter relationships, sister/sister relationships, faith, queerness, isolation, and class. It also respectfully shows how sex work can become a necessary part of someone’s survival, especially queer folks, with no other option. I love how complicated Hannah’s character is too- at times you hate her selfishness and inability to speak up, and other times you admire her strength and resilience. She is “literally just a girl” and I will be thinking about her character for a very long time.

All in all phenomenal read. If you like books like Old Enough, Luster, The Rachel Incident, A Language of Limbs, or the movie Shiva Baby, or if you simply just miss your Bubbe- this one is for you.

Thank you to the publishers and NetGalley for the ARC!

unfortunately wasn't crazy about this one, maybe my expectations were too high! kind of read like a YA novel which is fine, just not what I was expecting from it. I loved the premise and the way it was explored, addressing identity and queerness and generally coming-of-age as a girl in the world. a lot of it worked for me but not as well as I wanted it too. sits around 3.5 stars for me, rounded down~

I really enjoyed this book.

It was an exploration of growing up, of queerness, of grief; how they're all distinct yet intertwined. Beautiful prose, engaging pace, heartbreaking yet important plot points.

I shed many a tear.

✨ Review ✨ Girls Girls Girls by Shoshana von Blanckensee; Narrated by Rachel F. Hirsch & Shoshana von Blanckensee

Thanks to G.P. Putnam's Sons, PRHAudio and #netgalley for the gifted advanced copy/ies of this book!

In this lesbian coming-of-age story, Hannah flees her NYC conservative Jewish mother after high school graduation. Her and her bff and girlfriend Sam set out on a cross-country road-trip to San Francisco, to find the queer paradise that reportedly awaits there. On they arrive, to make ends meet, they start stripping at The Chez Paree, and the girls start feeling a distance growing between them. Sam makes new friends, Hannah tries to escape stripping and is struggling to make friends and fit in.

A story of the queer possibilities of SF, of making friends and found family, and grappling with familial stresses. The book seems to exist in multiple parts -- escaping NYC, finding their way in SF together, their growing as individuals, grief and family reconciliation, and finding her people in SF (I love the crew Hannah ends up finding). The book brought me so many emotions and I really loved this one!

🎧 Great narration -- immersive and emotional!

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Genre: literary fiction
Setting: 1990s NYC and SF
Length: 10 hours 49 minutes
Pub Date: Jun 17 2025

Read this if you like:
⭕️ coming-of-age stories
⭕️ 1990s queer San Francisco
⭕️ complex family dynamics
⭕️ understanding narratives of sex work

“maybe when you arent alone in your queerness, queerness is thicker than blood.”
setting is san fran in 1990s -which was genuinely such a fun setting to have! hannah is a closeted lesbian, Sam and her are in a secret relationship.honestly the queerness and the jewishness of these characters feels so real and raw i was enjoying it. these characters are def ones i will think about for a while

“Maybe when you aren’t alone in your queerness, queerness is thicker than water.”

Girls, Girls, Girls is a beautiful coming-of-age story about queerness, family, identity, grief, love, and belonging, set in 1990s San Francisco. Hannah is a closeted lesbian in her Long Island hometown, where she was raised by her mother, an increasingly religious Jew, and her beloved bubbe, who survived polio as a child, resulting in lifelong disabilities. Hannah is in a secret relationship with Sam, the only other queer she knows, and together the two girls plan their escape from Long Island through a cross-country road trip to San Francisco to start new lives openly as queers. Their new home in SF proves to be both the queer oasis they had dreamed of and a much harder reality than they had hoped for, as Sam and Hannah struggle to find work and a place to live.

I absolutely loved this debut—it’s queerness and Jewishness feel so true to the characters, the story, the setting, and to me as the reader. The events of this novel are emotionally complex and morally gray, but it is consistently earnest, loving, and imbued with care. I think readers are going to love this book, especially queer people young and old and especially queer Jews.

Thank you to Penguin Random House and NetGalley for a free eARC in exchange for my honest review.

This book felt like coming home. As a queer girl who packed her bags and moved away to a big city as a teen, I related so much to Hannah and Sam’s struggle. And honestly what lesbian hasn’t had a relationship like theirs?

Hannah was so real and such an easy protagonist to love. But what really got me was her relationship with her family. My grandmother is my favorite person in the world and we talk every day, I simply can’t imagine a world without her. As for my mother, well this year she wished me a happy pride for the first time ever. Baby steps.

This book is such a raw and real love letter to the unique experience of growing up queer. I can’t recommend it enough. What an excellent way to wrap up pride month!

A novel about two girls from Long Beach, NY growing up in the 80’s/90’s, understanding their sexuality, relationships, how to live on their own, growing apart and eventually coming back together. They keep their relationship a secret while living to NY, then move to San Francisco as soon as they graduate, leaving their friends and family behind. They make some not so great decisions, and struggle with who they are together as a couple and apart as individuals. This was very well done, beautifully written, and excellent character arcs.

Another contender for best of 2025 for me!!!

I am obsessed with this book. Literally cannot stop thinking about it. We meet Hannah, who moved out to SF with her friend Sam, who she’s in love with, to discover herself and her sexuality. She becomes a stripper, then an escort, and an interesting relationship ensues with a client and her friendship with Sam is affected. Then, grandma has news that makes Hannah rethink some things, and good grief there were just so many tears. This book was raw as hell. I just loved it so much.

this is a time capsule of a book. set in the summer of 1996, it captures that strange liminal space right before the internet began flattening everything - before memes, before constant discourse, before culture lost its distinct fingerprints. reading this felt like dipping into a preserved moment, a slice of the last analog decade, full of longing and grit and static.

this book follows hannah, an 18-year-old jewish girl fleeing her small, conservative hometown for san francisco with her best friend and secret girlfriend, sam. they're in love and broke and aching for a life where they can be queer out loud. what they find instead is a city that demands everything of them: their labor, their bodies, their identities. hannah starts stripping to pay rent, then eventually agrees to sleep with an older butch lesbian, chris, for money - not because she's desperate, but possibly because she's drawn to her, or because survival is never just about income. the book doesn't always explain these choices, and while i like messy characters, some moments felt underbaked. things just happened without emotional grounding.

the writing skews young, which makes sense given hannah's age, but i found myself wishing for a slightly older, more layered voice. the story touches so many themes - sex work, grief, identity, addiction, friendship, bodily autonomy - but most are explored on a surface level. not quite shallow, but not as emotionally nuanced as they could have been.

still, there's power here. grief runs through every part of the book: hannah's estrangement from her mother and sister, her fear of losing her bubbe, her slow realization that love doesn't always equal safety. there's grief in watching her lose pieces of herself to survive. she wants to get out of sex work, but can't afford to. the jobs she's qualified for don't pay a living wage. she's queer, jewish, barely an adult, and living in one of the most expensive cities in the country.

the supporting cast is one of the book's strengths. billie, a house painter hannah works with, is endlessly kind and nonjudgmental about her sex work. sam, her girlfriend, explores polyamory and queer community in ways that sometimes feel modernized for the setting - there's a cringey moment where she implies polyamory is resisting the patriarchy, which might be true but doesn't totally fit the 1996 vibe. april, the friend they left behind in new york, finds sobriety and joy in unexpected places. and chris, the much older woman hannah sleeps with, is both compelling and disturbing. she's grieving her own mother, drinking herself hollow, and clearly crossing lines. hurt people hurt people.

this book is full of messed up people doing messed up things because they're messed up. i like that vibe. i just wish it had dug deeper into the why.

in the end, girls girls girls is about love in its messiest forms - romantic, familial, chosen. it's about the impossibility of growing up without wounds, and the responsibility to stop those wounds from becoming weapons. it's good. it could have been great. but i'm still glad it exists.