An epic story of millennial girlhood, coming of age, coming out, and 20 years of bumping into people you have feelings for. I could not put this book down. I absolutely loved Susan’s character and each of her connections with the other characters. There is so much nostalgia for me as a millennial throughout this book and I love that it follows the characters from 2005 up till 2025. Beautiful writing, interesting character personalities, and a relatable and captivating plot! I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Review will be posted on Instagram and Amazon on pub day and links added to NetGalley.

Am I from Long Island? No. Have I ever been to Long Island? No. Am I a girl? Yes!!!!! I am a girl and I love lesbianism and queer literature and I love this book!!! I am ecstatic for this release so I can share my adoration of this story with everyone who will listen (and everyone who will not.)

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review. This book was unlike anything i’ve ever read and i could not put it down. If i wasn’t so busy I would’ve finished it in one sitting. The story leaps off the page and all the characters feel so real that it’s endearing. I would read thousands of pages of what happens to each character of his book and that’s saying something because I don’t really like character driven stories. The timeline can get a bit jumpy and points but it didn’t bother me too much. The long span of time this book covers allows for the characters to grow and mature without making the book longer than it needs to be. Seriously check this one out next year.

The music writing, the queer-centering, the 2010s Brooklyn scene, all of the the millennial early aughts nostalgia...this book had everything I was looking for and delivered on every promise and I'm so happy I received an early copy and didn't have to wait until 2026 to devour it!

In Long Island Girls, Gabrielle Korn delivers a raw and tender story about music and love, with beautiful prose and plenty of nostalgia.

Susan’s life has always revolved around music. It’s how she measures time, how she understands herself, and how she escapes the world around her. The one thing that rivals her obsession with music is her lifelong torch that she hold for the girl that got away - Eliza.

They first meet in 2005, in a car headed to a Long Island indie rock show. Susan is the driver, loud and opinionated, determined to belong to the scene she worships. Eliza, quiet and beautiful, doesn’t seem to fit.

Years later, Susan builds a life in Brooklyn’s indie music world, juggling late nights and bad bosses. When she reconnects with Eliza through a dating app, old feelings surge back, and they try again. But Eliza is still wrestling with trauma tied to the same people who now fill Susan’s professional orbit.

Over the next decade, Susan grows into her power. She takes on a toxic industry, finds real friendship, and meets someone who might finally be good for her. Still, Eliza lingers as a reminder of all the what-ifs that keep Susan from fully moving forward.

Funny, heartfelt, and honest, Long Island Girls is a story about queer love, creative ambition, and the ache of the almosts. Gabrielle Korn captures the messy beauty of growing up, #stmartins #gabriellekorn #longislandgirls

This book drew me in when I started reading and I found it very hard to put it down, until I was done. I'm not fond of sharing too much about the story because I hate review that tell me too much, but suffice it to say that this book is a serious coming of age story about a few characters. Long Island Girls details the lives of Susan, Katie, Johnny, Kyle, and Eliza, teenagers growing up in suburban Long Island, as they progress from high school in 2005 to adulthood in 2025. It chronicles how their lives bob and weave and how they, in some cases, lose touch and reconnect, but as adults, no longer adolescents. I found this book incredibly easy to read and the characters well developed but not totally predictable. I found myself reading late into the night because I just didn't want to stop knowing what was going on with each character, and I am long past my twenties, but still felt a pang of connection and recognition to what these young people were experiencing. I was truly sorry to see the book end. I highly recommend this book to anyone from LI (it was a trip down memory lane) and for anyone who came out and/or had to try to navigate melding their attractions with their fears and fantasies of who they were becoming.
As someone who also grew up in suburban Long Island and left in my mid-twenties, (albeit 20 years before this book is set) this story provided me with a trip down memory lane, from the locations/streets/towns referenced, to the overall sense of not knowing who you are at 17, to finding out who you are down the road. This book takes you on a journey as one character confronts her past trauma, another character faces her sudden queer awakening, and another couple face college and eventually marriage and kids. It delves into the confusing and often painful aspect of nostalgia for our youth and hometown, as well as asking the question, "was our childhood truly as we remember it to be?" As the characters age and pass through developmental stages of life: high school, college, first jobs, first loves, first heartbreaks, first bosses (good and bad), aging parents, and finally, waking up one day and realizing that their parents and friends are actually just normal human beings, and that things and people change, including ourselves!
I have to thank NetGalley for a ARC of this book. It was incredible.

As a queer Millennial woman, this book was at once like looking in a mirror and like making a new friend. Deeply nostalgic depictions of the early 2000s serve to heighten the feeling that these characters could be women I know, or even myself. Highly recommend to all other queer Millennials! ...and I suppose the straights too.

I was consumed by Long Island Girls from start to finish, so much so that I immediately looked up other works by Gabrielle Korn to read next - I just wanted to stay in the world she builds.

Long Island Girls follows Susan, from being an awkward 17 year old to her own woman in her mid thirties. Although marketed as a love story, I think this more a book on getting stuck, letting go, and finding yourself in the meantime.

“ …She writes: Loves music, movies, and trying new things. She's learned it's the small moments between the big ones where real happiness lives, and she knows this makes her kind of basic, but she doesn't care.”

Korn moves effortlessly through time skips, with characters and life events weaving in and out seamlessly to build on each other. Even though just told through Susan’s perspective, hearing from her as she gets older and more grounded makes for great layers.

I absolutely 💯 loved this book! I don’t think I moved for hours while reading this! This is a new author to me and I will be looking for more books!
Thank you for the ARC to the publisher and Netgalley!

Gabrielle Korn wrote a deliriously thrilling novel with wonderful characters and such a splendid voice.

Absolutely fantastic plot! Could not put the book down once I began reading it. Cannot wait for it to be released. I will recommend it to everyone I know!

I enjoyed reading this novel. The characters were well developed and had a natural chemistry. I look forward to reading more by this author.

Thank you NetGalley and publisher for the opportunity to read and review this novel.

This book is such an ode to being a young girl in the early 2000s. I couldn’t put this book down.
We follow Susan, 17 at the start of the book, and we learn about her life as a teenager living in Long Island in the early 2000s. We follow along as Susan is just learning about herself and her sexuality. I really enjoy the time jumps, and I love Susan’s story with Eliza. I feel like it’s a very realistic depiction of how sometimes we fall in love with the idea of people, and not who they actually are. Thank you so much net galley and the publisher for sending over this arc! Chad wait to get the physical copy in my hand once it’s out.

This was really good, and as an elder millennial, very nostalgic.
A coming of age, that perfectly grasps the angst and anger of the early 2000s.
We grew up without the Internet and then all of a sudden it was everywhere and it was harming and we didn't really understand it. I perfectly remember all of that.
The power we didn't understand of the Internet. But we did understand indie rock.

A queer love story, and the feeling that never leaves you of the "one who got away" this book was really enjoyable and you should watch out for it when it comes out in June 2026.

Thank you for the arc! I loved this and it was such a fun read.
One thing about me is that I love a coming of age and slice of life story. We follow Susan throughout 20 years of her life and even though there are multiple time jumps, it flows pretty seamlessly. I loved living life with her for a while, the side characters were fun and the realization that she had been idolizing a main character in her head all along felt so relatable and full circle. I would read more from this author, the writing was fun and quick with a great blend of funny but also serious moments.

I really loved this book and found myself wanting to read it all the time. It followed the main character Susan's life from when she was a teen in the mid aughts to present day. How we think something that "could have been" is more special than it really is and we romanticize who we could have been if things went differently for us. I don't find it believable that Johnny and Ramona would have been main fixtures through her young adult life but they played their roles in the story.
It gave a great perspective on how the early days on the internet and its impact on millennials.

Gabrielle Korn’s Long Island Girls is a sharp, emotionally layered novel about friendship, identity, and the messy transition from adolescence to adulthood. Set against the backdrop of suburban Long Island, it follows a group of young women navigating love, ambition, and the weight of expectations. Korn captures the intensity of female friendship—the loyalty, the betrayals, and the unspoken bonds—with a voice that feels both intimate and cutting.

The novel explores themes of queerness, self-discovery, and the struggle to break free from the places that shape us. Korn’s prose is vivid and direct, balancing humor with vulnerability, and her characters feel raw and real, flawed yet deeply relatable. Long Island Girls is not just a coming-of-age story—it’s a portrait of how women carry their pasts into the futures they’re still trying to define.

A compelling, character-driven read that lingers, it’s perfect for readers who appreciate honest explorations of friendship and identity.

Thank you Netgalley and the Publisher for the opportunity to read Long Island Girls early in exchange for an honest review.

I will start this by saying it’s very very difficult for me to find a book that can’t put down or can even just sit and read without stopping for several hours and this book really had me from the first few pages. It is even more difficult for me to say that a book with strong romantic themes could be one of my favourites I’ve read in a while but I was truly so impressed by this novel.

Long Island girls is set from 2005-2020, where we follow Susan in snapshots of her life, every 5 years, as she navigates her queer identity, her career in music, and her relationship to her childhood friends and aging parents. Seemingly at the centre of it all is Eliza, who she meets in her teens and becomes emotionally attached to an image of throughout the novel.

What I realized at the end of this book is that the most important relationship of all in the story, and what the author exceptionally makes clear to the reader, is the relationship between Susan and herself. This is a story full of character growth, learned self-love, and the queer experience throughout the timespan of the novel.

The way the queer characters are treated and are able to express themselves freely in the different timespans the author explores is almost shocking to the reader, as I think we can easily forget how far society has come (although we have an extremely long way to go) when it comes to supporting queer people and defending them from homophobia in social settings. We see this societal growth in the way queer characters experience their world and how straight characters offer their support.

Each time setting is handled and written with such care and attention to detail that it feels like the author is transporting you right to that era. The dialogue is extremely well written and thought out, and the characters are lovable and witty. This was a masterclass in writing settings. As an older Gen Z, Susan and her friends felt like they could be the older teens I would have thought were cool in the late 2000s.

It was such a pleasure to read this novel and I truly did not want to end. I can’t wait to pick up a physical copy when it’s released and I can’t wait to see what Gabrielle Korn writes next. A review of this novel will be posted to TikTok as well and the link will be added to NetGalley.

The nostalgia. The self discovery. The millennial girlhood. 🥹♥️

As a girl who grew up in the 90s/2000s, I loved Long Island Girls! It is such a unique yet relatable story. Gabrielle delivered lovable complex characters, real life trauma and struggles, and a deep dive into relationships, both intimate and platonic.

So good. Highly recommend!

Long Island Girls follows multiple points in Susan’s life, from 2005 to 2025. A chance encounter with a popular girl named Eliza leads to Susan discovering that she is queer. When an almost-romance is derailed by a touchy subject that Susan brings up, they part ways acrimoniously. Over the next twenty years, we discover how their paths cross several times as Susan’s life gradually changes when she moves to New York City and starts working for a trendy indie record label. I absolutely loved this book. The character of Susan in particular feels so well realized and authentic. It’s not often where a main character in a book truly feels like someone that actually exists in almost every way. The way that we move forward in time throughout the book really worked for me. It was an opportunity to see how the characters grew, as well as the ways Susan was still stuck in the past. I also really enjoyed the exploration of the indie music scene, and the ways the film and music industries run in general. That, combined with Susan and Eliza’s nuanced relationship made for a compelling read that I felt invested in. I look forward to reading more from the author and have already recommended this book to someone.

A beautiful story full of characters with depth. The nostalgia hit hard as a 90s kid, and even more so as a bisexual woman. The trauma hit hard, and you could feel the ache the characters did

Not only did I really enjoy this book, but I really related to it. As a lesbian that grew up in Staten Island during the 2000s/2010s, this book felt like a time-capsule filled with moments and memories that I felt so near and dear to my heart.

Thank you to NetGalley & the publishers for the ARC!

This book is a sharp and an emotionally rich coming-of-age novel that follows Susan through a decade of heartbreak, ambition, and the pull of a love she can’t quite outrun. Gabrielle Korn tells a story that is tender and incisive, capturing the intoxicating chaos of early adulthood. Susan and Eliza’s on-again, off-again connection is rendered with humor, heat, and heartbreak, making their dynamic feel painfully real and deeply compelling. As Susan builds a career, confronts predatory industry norms, and stumbles toward healthier love, the question of who she might become if she finally lets go of the past lingers beautifully at the center of the book. A poignant celebration of queer joy and the messy, transformative power of Long Island Girls shines with honesty and heart.

Long Island Girls starts in 2005 when Susan is 17 and goes to present day. The book follows Susan’s relationships with Katie, her best friend; Johnny, her mentor; & Eliza, the girl who opened her eyes to her sexuality and keeps popping in & out of her life. This story is so nostalgic & I loved it. It is funny & also heartbreaking. The author captures the intense, vulnerable, awkward emotions of being a teen/new adult while Susan navigates friendships, romantic relationships, career, family, and self discovery.

This book was relateable and honest. i truly appreciated the dynamic and addicting storytelling and am mpressed with Cabrielle Korn's writing! I feel transformed.

A great coming of age story that shows what it was like growing up in the early-mid aughts. I was in college by then and reading the book I could see how dangerous of a time it was to be a teen. Not only does the book show the perils of the time period, but it’s a terrified coming into gay story as Susan grows into her identity as a lesbian. I also loved how the story shows the strong connections we make with certain people, and how we become infauted, not necessarily because of that person but because of circumstances around the relationship.

“We had the entire world at our fingertips. Something no generation had before ours. And what did we use it for? We used it to torture each other.”

Read this book if you like:
-NYC settings
-Coming of age stories
-Queer identity treks
-Sexual assault recovery tropes
-New adult timelines

Long Island Girls comes out 6/23.

This novel perfectly encapsulates the feeling of growing up queer. Surrounded by nostalgia and spanning 20 years, Susan identifies as a lesbian, meets her first real crush, has her first real girlfriend, and has her first real heartbreak, all while finding herself, coping with growing challenges, and settling into adulthood. She comes to terms with hard truths, rediscovers what matters most in her life, and continues to pick herself back up every time a hurdle knocks her down. Reading about someone’s nostalgia—while also witnessing the events that make them nostalgic—creates a certain kind of charm. Plus, as a queer person who grew up in the early 2000s, it’s fun to relive these moments alongside Susan. It’s like Boyhood but for lesbians in Long Island. It’s like Edge of Seventeen but for scene kids who wanted to work in music. This is my first of Korn’s work but hopefully not my last.

This book was unlike anything i’ve ever read and i could not put it down. If i wasn’t so busy I would’ve finished it in one sitting. The story leaps off the page and all the characters feel so real that it’s endearing. I would read thousands of pages of what happens to each character of his book and that’s saying something because I don’t really like character driven stories. The timeline can get a bit jumpy and points but it didn’t bother me too much. The long span of time this book covers allows for the characters to grow and mature without making the book longer than it needs to be. I had an amazing time reading this and will definitely be recommending it when it comes out.

This book was absolutely beautiful. It was outside of my typical genres, but I adored The Shutouts, so I couldn't pass up an opportunity for this ARC. It was nostalgic and painfully relatable. I'll have to come back and add quotes because there were many wonderful ones. There were things that I needed to hear. I felt all the feelings! It not only kept my attention with every page turn, but it gave me a sense of clarity and peace with experiences of my own. I'm stunned by the emotions this book pulled out of me, and I already wish I could read it again for the first time. One thing is clear - I will now read absolutely anything Gabrielle Korn writes! Thank you to NetGalley, the author, and publisher for my copy of Long Island Girls. It is one I will not forget.

A bittersweet, nostalgic queer coming-of-age romance with indie-music vibes. The story follows Susan and Eliza: they first spark in 2005, drift apart, then reconnect years later – exploring love, identity, and heartbreak against the backdrop of Brooklyn’s indie-music scene. It’s

Okay wow Gabrielle I love you. How do you capture humanity exactly the way it should be captured???

This coming-of-age queer novel set in 2005 Long Island is an honest portrait of relationships (to people and technology) at that time. Korn captures the suburban world of record stores, "garage band" shows, family pressure, and aching uncertainty with incredible authenticity. The relationship between the characters (specifically Susan and Eliza) throughout their lives feels extremely authentic to the queer experience —messy, electric, and full of possibility. The story balances nostalgia with emotional depth, rage, and devastation, reminding us how transformative our first relationships can be. This novel lingers long after the final page, As with all of Korn's novels. Well done!!

Long Island Girls does it so well! I loved the pacing of this story, the sapphic yearning, coming of age. This story follows the main character through several pivotal moments in her life, regarding her sexuality and finding herself. The time jumps are done exceptionally well and I was interested to follow the story through all of them. Really well written and I think this is a must read for anyone who grew up sapphic on Long Island.

Ah! Really liked this title. It was fast-paced and creative. It left me thinking about music, the 2000s, and relationships. It is well-written and feels just like being part of the friend group Korn writes about. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.

So good, so well-written, so compelling that I finished it the same day I was approved for the ARC. More often than not, I’m unimpressed with the way queer characters are depicted. It’s not even just the stereotypes that I find so annoying, but the way creators add ‘gay’ as a descriptor as casually as they would ‘blonde hair.’ It’s so uninspiring, because queerness is layered, and realizing your queerness in your youth is integral to the foundation of your relationship with yourself. It feels like a cop-out not to expand further into that. But Gabrielle Korn truly took Long Island Girls to every level and dug out all the gritty details, beautiful or not.

In many ways, I felt that Susan mirrored emotions I’ve similarly experienced, and feeling that from a fictional character is always such a beautiful experience. Near the end, I genuinely developed such a keen sense of hope that rebuilding your relationship with yourself, and with your perceptions of the world is possible, which is such a exciting and inspiring feeling.

received this arc from the publisher on netgalley, much appreciated!

Going to use Proper Grammar (ish) for the serious review this book deserves. When I first started reading <i>Long Island Girls</i>, I told my book club that I think I'm about ten years too young for this book. It pulls so hard and builds so strongly on the person Susan was and the way the world was in 2005, and I have none of that nostalgia. But in a way, I think I'm the perfect age to read as what I am now going to consider as The Coming Of Age Novel going forward? Or maybe it's always the right time to read a book about growing up and being messy and not figuring it out just yet.

This book is gay, in a way I really, really get. And it thinks about gender in a way I am not lucky enough to see often. It's so compulsively readable, the only reason I didn't finish it in a day is that I hate reading on my phone and that's where all my arcs live. But I read sixty percent of it today, and I worked all day too.

I love the way Gabrielle Korn has written and sectioned <i>Long Island Girls</i>, and how the book spans twenty years but I felt like I saw all of it. It didn't get stuck anywhere that wasn't necessary. I get really annoyed when people on social media talk about core memories, because how do you know what's going to stick, but this book was a recollection of Susan's core memories and it worked really well.

The characters here all felt real. Not always likeable and often frustrating but I have read a lot of books where characters are simply Too Perfect And Understanding and that always pisses me off so I loved it. I've only mentioned Susan because she is the protagonist but there are so many journeys and they all felt deeply realistic to me.

The only thing I didn't like but that I should have known would be here is that this book takes place in a Covid-universe. Which I mean, obviously it does. But still, I hate it. I like my media in an alternate universe, sorry to say. I got over it though, because I can be an adult sometimes.

I don't know enough about music or the early days of social media to comment on that stuff but it felt right to me?

I think this will be so relatable to lots of people. Not me, because of being too young and never being in love with New York and probably loads of other reasons. But hey, you don't have to relate to something to get it so trust me when I say this is a good book and you will like it if you have good taste. The end!

After reading Korn’s Yours For The Taking and Shutouts, I was happy to devour any of her future books. Long Island Girls met all my expectations, despite being a shift in genre. Her characters are so well developed; my emotional investment in their lives had me hooked and thinking about them when I had to put the book down. Their experiences had me reevaluating some of my own, and inspired me to live true to myself. And the millennial nostalgia is delicious.

What a way to end 2025(I'm writing this on the 31st)!
I got this ARC on a whim, I don't know the author and it sounded intriguing but I didn't even check if it was romance of litfic or what, I just read “indie music world” and requested it. I'm so glad I did.
This is a fantastic book, an easy 5 star read. It was so beautifully written, I could see everything described and felt like I was there. It helps that I grew up partially in the era described here, so it was really nostalgic. But when we're moving through the years I was surprised to see how a movie was going in my mind of what happened during those years and it made the experience of reading this book just absolutely perfect.
This was a hard read at times, definitely check trigger warnings, but it was so beautiful and a little cathartic. From growing up queer in a time where it wasn't as nice out there, to having anxiety and not knowing what is the right decision, navigating adult life when you have no clue what you are doing and feeling like you were supposed to still be a kid. There's a line about chance that really stuck with me, I'm very set in my own ways and I just don't know how to handle things changing. I'm much like the main character in that way, it freaks me out and I just can't function.
During that ending I had chills all over my body, that was POWERFUL. I wasn't really sure where we were going with this, the beginning led me to think this was one thing but it was a completely different story, and I loved that.
I felt seen in many ways, and in different parts of the book. It was just a great time and I couldn't ask for a better way to end the year.

Thank you Netgalley and St. Martins Press for the ARC!

What Curtis Sittenfeld's "Prep" gave to millennial girls in 2005, "Long Island Girls" returns to us tenfold twenty plus years later. Full of that early aughts nostalgia, that aging millennial angst, but also that love letter to the queer girls who grew up into someone they didn't expect: Korn's novel fills a space that is both heady and romantic but also achingly real. It's a reminder that in some ways we never really leave behind the people that we were, yet in others we become more and more ourselves if we can only open our hearts to possibility. And while we millennials may never truly feel like we've grown up, Susan is here to remind us that maybe that's a good thing. Because if we never feel like we've grown up, then that means we haven't stopped growing.

As a 90’s girl, this gave me all the feels! So nostalgic! So relatable! A coming of age queer novel. The self-discovery through different phases of girlhood - obsessing with ex’s, exploring social politics, queer issues shaped from the 2000’s era. Overall, i enjoyed this book for the honest display of how painfully, adventurous identity discovery and personal growth can be! Beautifully done Gabrielle!

Interesting premise, great hook! I plan to get this when it gets published! Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC