A beautiful coming of age story that deals with difficult themes in ways that feel empowering for character development without judgement. I loved the story and was in a similar place of understanding faith after the loss of my grandmother, and this was exactly what I needed.

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

"𝓘 𝔀𝓪𝓷𝓽 𝓽𝓸 𝓫𝓮𝓵𝓸𝓷𝓰 𝓼𝓸 𝓶𝓾𝓬𝓱, 𝓘 𝓮𝓷𝓭 𝓾𝓹 𝓷𝓸𝓽 𝓫𝓮𝓵𝓸𝓷𝓰𝓲𝓷𝓰 𝓪𝓽 𝓪𝓵𝓵"

This was soooo good!? What? I'm really getting spoiled so early in the year with such great arcs to read!

Set in 1990s San Francisco, we follow Hannah, our FMC, a queer Jewish teenager grappling with first love, family secrets, and the burgeoning awareness of her own sexuality. At only eighteen, she doesn't fully know who she is or what she wants and seeing her growth as she goes through the good and bad of self-exploration was moving.

I have this bad habit of skimming over the blurbs of arcs and it's like key words stick out to me and I forget the rest lol. I'm not sure if the synopsis to this story even hinted at the emotional rollercoaster it was going to take me on, but I'm so glad I picked this one up and I'm blown away again by another debut novel this year.

This story tackles so many different things. Being Jewish, being gay in the 90s, not being able to talk about being queer or thinking you have more than platonic feelings for your close friend. Starting a relationship and having all of these emotions and not knowing what to do with them.

It dives deeply into first love, into family issues, grief, death, life lessons - at times some pretty questionable things happen, and it gets a little dark.

This is a poignant coming-of-age story that beautifully captures the complexities of young love, friendship, and identity.

Shoshana's prose is lyrical and poetic but it's also so raw and unfiltered. The descriptions of San Francisco and New York are so descriptive and vivid that it was so easy to transport myself there and the nostalgia that just popped off the page.

I'm such a 90s girl... I was not the age of these girls during that time, but I love being transported back. The dialogue is sharp and authentic, capturing the awkwardness and intensity of teenage relationships with remarkable honesty.

What an emotional ride, there's really so much packed within these pages. Epic emotional highs and lows - this is one that will stay with me for a long time. I honestly can't recommend it enough.

💖Sapphic Romance
🍭Coming of Age
💖1990's Era
🍭New York to San Francisco Setting
💖Self Discovery
🍭Family Struggles
💖Nostalgia
🍭Lyrical Prose

Expected Release Date 06/17/25

Many thanks to NetGalley and PENGUIN GROUP Putnam for the complementary advanced digital copy. All thoughts and opinions are my own. 🌈💐

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All I can say is wow. This book hit home for me! This book exceeded all my expectations.
Shoshana von Blanckensee's "Girls Girls Girls" is a poignant coming-of-age story that was a beautiful and touching story. It captures the complexities of young love, friendship, and identity. I enjoyed reading about our main character Hannah (queer Jewish teenager) who is exploring her lesbianism, family secrets, first true love, and Judaism. Shoshana von Blanckensee did an excellent job at setting the scene. It felt real and I cannot say enough about it! A huge thank you to NetGalley & the publishers for this ARC.

Girls Girls Girls blew me away. What an incredible debut.

From the first few pages I knew I was in for a treat. von Blackensee is a spectacular writer - lyrical without being flowery, concise without compromising on detail.

And then the story itself absorbed me completely. I want to tear up when I think about Hannah; I rarely say characters feel like friends (they're characters), but Hannah feels like a friend.

The blurb describes this as Emma Cline's The Guest meets Haley Jakobson's Old Enough. I have to say I don't really get the Cline reference (maybe the perpetually observant state of finding oneself in an unfamiliar world? if that's the case, I'd have compared it to Win Me Something by Kyle Lucia Wu) but the Jakobson one felt spot on. Girls Girls Girls is tender and heartrending - a character-driven story that's genuinely riveting.

I work at a bookstore in San Francisco, where the story takes place, and stocking this book will be a no-brainer for us. I can't wait to rave about it. This is my favorite book of 2025 so far.

“for all the ways we lose each other, for all the ways we get lost.”

This book was so beautiful. It managed to be so many things at the same time.

It felt like my first time watching The L Word mixed with 90s nostalgia, complex family dynamics, and a deep dive into the vastness of grief.

This felt like a story that so many people could relate to; closeted kids in a small town, anyone who has a complicated relationship with their parents, anyone who has dealt with the grief of losing a beloved family member.

I also really enjoyed how the author tackled difficult issues like drug use and abuse, sex work, and the stigma surrounding those issues.

“We walked to the water and let it rush over our feet. It’s freezing but I don’t flinch. I like the icy bite of it. I want to walk in deeper, let it pummel the heartache from me.”

Thank you so much to NetGalley, the author and the publisher for the ARC!

This was an amazing bildungsroman! The exposition part in the begging was a tad bit too long but once we got into the story I could not put this down. The characters are interesting even though the book is very “no plot just vibes” so they keep you reading. I appreciate the lesbian with a disapproving mom representation. I wish the book had a little bit more plot but I also understand that this is where the author wanted to take the story. I liked how the book didn’t shy away from using lesbian terminology. Overall I would recommend this if you like stories about lesbians realizing they’re lesbians and trying to decide what to do with their life now that they know they’re lesbians.

This will be a contender for one of the best books I read this year for sure. The writing is vivid and lyrical, especially in the nostalgic '90s setting. It’s edgier than typical teen books, with a tone that recalls the WLW stories I loved growing up. The Jewish family dynamic adds warmth, balancing out the intense moments.

The language, true to its time, might be jarring for some, but it feels essential to the story. Watching the main character, Hannah, make mistakes is tough but immersive. This book pulls you in emotionally and doesn’t let go. 5 stars—if you love this genre, don’t miss it.

"I want to belong so much, I end up not belonging at all"

I was not expecting the emotional rollercoaster this book brought me! This coming of age story shows the ups and downs of Hannah, suffocated in her childhood town and fleeing across the country with her first love. For a debut novel, it does a fantastic job of putting the viewers in the shoes of Hannah. We get to see a well-rounded portrayal of everything that makes her, her. Which isn't always pretty. She falls head over heels in love with the first girl she's ever crushed on, and allows herself to get swept up in the fantasy of living somewhere she can be authentically herself for the first time. She burns down bridges with loved ones in doing so and lets her girlfriend Sam take the reins of her life. All is well in her eyes, until slowly everything starts falling apart one by one and she struggles to put the pieces back together again.

This book is incredibly moving and shows how identity is so integral to a young girl living in a place where she is forced at every corner to be who she is not. Pacing was smooth and fast and I found myself bingeing most of it at once. My only issue with the novel was it's hesitancy to commit to some of the darker themes it touches on, like sex-work. It took me a little out of the story when everything was so clean-cut, but the raw vulnerability that shows up with Hannah and Bubbe's relationship definitely balances out the novel. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for my ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Shoshana von Blanckensee's "Girls Girls Girls" is a poignant coming-of-age story that beautifully captures the complexities of young love, friendship, and identity. Set in 1990s San Francisco, the novel follows Hannah, a queer Jewish teenager grappling with first love, family secrets, and the burgeoning awareness of her own sexuality.

Von Blanckensee's prose is both lyrical and raw, effortlessly transporting readers back to a specific time and place. The vibrant descriptions of San Francisco, from the fog-shrouded streets to the vibrant queer scene, evoke a strong sense of nostalgia. The dialogue is sharp and authentic, capturing the awkwardness and intensity of teenage relationships with remarkable honesty.

I must say that it took a while for me to warm up to the novel, but I voraciously devoured the second half of the book. Especially because Hannah's close and unconditional relationship with her Bubbe resonated with me deeply.

"Girls Girls Girls" is a poignant and ultimately hopeful story about different kinds of love, finding your voice, embracing your true self, and forging your own path in the world.

Thanks to Net Galley and the publisher for the ARC!

this was a pretty good book. It was a coming of age book about different cultures, and queer representation. I think it was a bit more of a YA book than i thought it would be. I think the themes were good and writing was also good, but again too YA fir me

Thank you to NetGalley, to the author, and to the publisher for this complimentary ARC in exchange for my honest review!!!

What an incredible debut novel from Shoshana von Blanckensee. This book is set in the mid-nineties and follows Hannah as she moves from a small town in New York to San Francisco to explore her queer identity free from the limitations of her family. At only eighteen, she doesn't fully know who she is or what she wants, and seeing her growth as she goes through the good and bad of self-exploration was moving.

I especially loved Hannah's relationship with her dear Bubbe. Their bond was so special and grounded the story. I enjoyed this book a lot and would definitely recommend it. Thank you to Penguin Group Putnam and Netgalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

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

I loved this book. It's definitely right up my street, lesbian coming of age that follows Hannah who is Jewish as she runs away from Long Beach, NY to San Francisco to be with Sam, her childhood sweetheart.

They quickly run into issues with finding work or somewhere to live, so they start stripping and Hannah also begins working as an escort for Chris, an older butch lesbian.

I loved seeing how Hannah grappled with her queerness and Jewishness, and her relationships with her mom, bubbe, and sister, which felt like the true heart of the story.

Parts reminded me of Margo’s Got Money Troubles by Rupi Thorpe in terms of examining how sex work can be a matter of survival while not shying away from the toll it can take on the person doing it.

I especially enjoyed seeing Hannah start to make more connections in the queer community and come out of her shell a bit more. It made me a bit sad to think of cities having become even more unaffordable for queer people and queer venues like lesbian bars dying out.

This is such a good book overall, a wonderful debut, and I definitely recommend it!

Hannah and Sam are best friends in Long Beach, New York. Unbeknownst to their families, they are also secret girlfriends. They have hatched a plan to move across country to San Francisco as soon as they graduate from high school. They hope in San Francisco they will be able to live openly, free from the judgment of Hannah’s religious mother. But it means leaving Hannah’s beloved grandmother behind.

The two go through with their plan, but they find that it is not so easy to live on their own. They struggle to make money, and end up making choices they never would have expected just a few months before. Soon, the pressure of making money and building a life starts to drive Hannah and Sam apart — and Hannah must confront what life in San Francisco would look like without her best friend and first love.

This is a touching and perceptive story about simultaneously exploring your identity at the same time you are navigating your first serious relationship. I also appreciated the depiction of the relationship between Hannah and family, as Hannah both tries to carve out a new life but feels the push and pull of her grandmother, sister, and mother. The book also captures well what a slice of queer life in San Francisco was like in the ‘90s.

Highly recommended.

4.5/5. This was a very beautiful, emotional book. I enjoyed watching Hannah's character development and felt even her narration voice matured as the book went on. I learned a lot about San Francisco too!

I loved this book! Lots of bad and scary things happened but the whole thing still felt like a warm hug. The narrative voice was beautiful, the setting and characters were rich and developed, and the conflicts and stakes were compelling. I love a road-trip story so I was pulled in from the beginning, and the life and relationships Hannah built for herself in San Francisco and Long Beach kept me engrossed.

Shoshana von Blanckensee does a fantastic job in writing this book, it had that elmeent that I was looking for and was hooked from the first page. I was engaged with what was happening enjoyed the way the characters worked with this story. It had that feel that I wanted and was glad I was able to read this.

Man, I really thought I was going to love this one. Von Blanckensee sets up some really compelling conflicts for her protagonist: Hannah loves but also feels alienated from her homophobic family, who she ditches in favor of an imagined queer community that she can't quite connect with, and reluctantly takes up sex work under pressure from her girlfriend Sam (a character I can only describe as detestable) and the looming threat of poverty and homelessness. The only people she can really connect with are her grandmother and Sam, but these connections are no relief to her—she can't admit anything to her grandmother, who is dying of cancer, and Sam is controlling, judgemental, a social butterfly and a chronic cheater who takes naturally to everything Hannah struggles with.

But none of those conflicts come to much of anything. Hannah's family and abandoned best friend forgive her easily when she reconnects with them, and she and Sam end the story as best friends again with only the barest acknowledgement of how terrible Sam has been. (Seriously, she does maybe one nice thing the whole book, and it's in the last fifty pages!) Despite everyone's warnings, nothing bad happens to Hannah in the tough neighborhood she lives in, the slum lord she rents from is nice if slightly condescending, and the walk-in closet sized apartment is clean and cozy. Feeling awkward and embarrassed is about as it gets for her stripping, and she conveniently finds a a fulfilling above-minimum-wage job as soon as the escorting situation with butch sugar daddy Chris falls out (and, even more conveniently, this job provides her with the cool gay friends she's been searching for). I'm reminded a little of another ARC I read recently, Woodworking by Emily St James, which I had a similar complaint about. It's hard for me to feel satisfied by a book that brings up all these heavy topics but doesn't dig into them—it just feels a little defanged.

Another aspect that didn't quite sit right with me was the depiction of Chris, who is portrayed as pathetic, even disgusting. Part of the problem is that she's awkward and dishonest and twice Hannah's age, and part of the problem is that she thinks she knows Hannah far more intimately than she really does—but part of the problem, too, is that she's butch and working class and that she struggles with addiction. (To be fair to von Blanckensee, Hannah's eventual love interest is also butch and working class, and she's portrayed very positively though she doesn't take up nearly as much of the narrative as Chris does.) Chris also sexually assaults Hannah, which is not depicted graphically but is dealt with only minimally. She owns up to it and apologizes in a short conversation, and it is mentioned maybe once or twice otherwise. Maybe that wouldn't bother other people, but it did bother me.

Nonetheless, while it was a little disappointing, I did enjoy reading this. The first hundred pages or so (when the aforementioned really compelling conflicts were set up) were really great, and I read the whole thing in maybe two days. I found the prose very smooth, nothing to complain about. Some of the relationships—with April and with Bubbe, for example—were sensitively and movingly handled. And, as with Woodworking, for some people the un-gritty-ness may be a plus. Could be a good read for people who have moved on from purely feel-good YA novels and cozy romance reads but aren't ready for or interested, say, in Michelle Tea or Sarah Schulman.

I absolutely fucking loved this book. I just may have to preorder my own copy. It feels weird to me to know that fiction set in the 1990s is now categorized as historical fiction, but I need more fiction set in this time period. I went to high school in the 1990s in a conservative suburb in Oregon, so I related quite a bit to the characters, though I'm bi and not Jewish.

Girls Girls Girls is a coming-of-age story about a Jewish girl named Hannah who lives in Long Beach, New York, a closeted lesbian who's never fit in and fights against the boxes she's been stuck in. She is in love with her best friend Sam, the only other queer she knows. She constantly clashes with her mother, who turned Orthodox when her father died. She knows she's Jewish, she just doesn't want to be Jewish like her, and she knows she's a woman, but she doesn't want to be a woman like her mom. Her grandmother and herself have a tight bond.

She makes a pact with Sam to move out to San Francisco in a van when they turn 18. Struggling to make ends meet, they turn to stripping, which Sam is good at and Hannah feels trapped by. Gradually, her codependent relationship with Sam fades away as the two girls grow apart. Hannah comes out of her shell, bounces from an escort job to work on an all-queer painting crew, gets over her culture shock and finds herself in the city just as she gets crushing news from home.

The writing was beautiful and I felt as if I really got to know Hannah and her struggles with young love and identity, her found family and the journey she took with her birth family and accepting herself. This was clearly a book of the author's heart and it made sense that the author's also an oncology nurse for a day job.

This is the kind of book that will stay with me for a long time. It made me think and moved me. One of my most anticipated releases of 2025.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the gift of an early preview. I am leaving this review voluntarily.

I really enjoyed this read! I feel like I haven’t read many books that take place in this time period and so I appreciated the historical backdrop that wasn’t all that long ago. I was expecting a little bit more grit (a la The Hop by Diana Clark), but I liked seeing Hannah and Sam’s relationship change and shift, and I loved Hannah’s relationship with her bubble. The writing in this was excellent and I look forward to reading more from this author!

I was in love with this story right from the start. I felt immersed in the drama of the friendship and secrets shared between the main characters. The self-discovery throughout the book was written so well. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.