I can’t believe I forgot to review this one. I loved it! I love the topic of friendship and write and read about it often. This is one of the best books to come out about friendship in a decade. Trust me, I’ve read them all. I appreciated the pop culture analysis mixed in with the author’s personal views.

This book was featured and recommended on episode 132 of What Should I Read Next with indie bookseller Annie Jones, available for listening here: https://modernmrsdarcy.com/132-episode/

It took me literally months, but I finished this book. What can I say? If you want a memoir mixed with a white-washed, heterocentric history of how female friendship has evolved throughout time in culture and Schaefer's life, then read this book. If you happen to be queer, like me, Schaefer's complete erasure of queerness is obnoxious at best. More often than not it's insulting. Her slight inclusion of women of color comes off as an attempt to not be targeted for excluding and does not feel genuine. I wanted to like this book because female friendship is extremely important to me and I love the fierce protectiveness that women have for one another, but this text is too scattered and exclusionary. It is, perhaps, a white feminist's reading of female friendship and that I could do without.

Thank you to Net Galley for the ARC of this book given in exchange for a fair and honest review!

After reading Kayleen Schaefer's Text Me When You Get Home, I really rethought my own relationship to other women. While I am more of Schaefer's generation, I found that I'm really more like her mom; as a mother of three kiddos, I don't have as much time to really invest in my personal friendships and the one I do invest it tend to be the ones with easy connections: kids the same age, work together so that there are obvious time we can talk, etc. If it becomes too hard to maintain the friendship or it takes to much time from my household, I'm not that interested.

Schaefer's book is a mixture of friendship memoir and sociological commentary. It looks at the way female friendships have evolved over time and the way media has reflected that change--or, in many cases, not reflected that change. It's true still that television loves a catfight between girls. I grew up in the height of celebreality and my entertaining moments were definitely comprised of the LC/Kristen Cavallari conflicts and the New York/Pumpkin spat. NewYork, in particular, made such a career of her fighting with other women that she's still immortalized in memes almost (or more than?) a decade later. It seems like women were always being pitted against each other for fun or, most commonly, for the love and affection of a guy.

Despite the media representation, it seems like women's friendships stay pretty powerful things; I see it played out over and over on my social media timelines where women share affection and praise each other for what they bring to their friendships. They welcome each other's babies to the world and share in each other's biggest moments, get each other through the hard parts, and have fun together. Yet Shaefer makes an excellent point: their relationships to each other are not prioritized or given the same respect as familial/marital relationships. Why not? Why are women being put in positions where they have to justify who is meaningful in their lives?

This book was a great overview of female friendship and very enlightening to read. I learned a lot from it and have really decided to spend more time nurturing my relationships with other women. I'm also buying my own BFF her own copy for Galentine's Day this very year.

3.5/5
https://bibwithblog.blogspot.com/2018/10/review-of-text-me-when-you-get-home-by.html

A pop culture filled examination of positive female friendship that until recent years, has not been represented in a positive light

Though I’m not a huge fan of nonfiction this was something I found really interesting. I loved the concept the book explored and I’m actually buying a copy for my friends, who I say this to.

Thank you Dutton & NetGalley for the copy of this book - all opinions are my own.

I have heard mixed reviews on this one, so I was very curious to dive into it myself, as a woman who holds her female friendships exceptionally close to her heart.

I can say honestly, that I really loved this book - accepting this book for exactly what it is, a reflection on the truly unique and intimate nature of female friendship. I don't think for a minute this book was meant to be the be all end all on literature about female relationships, but I do think it did a great job of capturing the evolution of Kayleen's perspective on those relationships in her life.

I could absolutely identify with different points in Kayleen's journey with female friendships - while I have always been incredibly lucky to have amazing groups of women in my life, I have seen how those relationships have evolved into ever-stronger anchors in my life. My female friendships are some of the closest, most intimate relationships I have ever had - and I would be lost without them.

All to say that I genuinely enjoyed reading this and using it as time to reflect on how fortunate I am to be surrounded by my crew, and how grateful I am for each and every one of them. Also to enjoy seeing snippets of other female-centric relationships - it makes my heart happy to see those bonds happening all around me.

I wanted to love this one as I have a relatively new best friend and our friendship was instant and tight, but the book isn't really well written. I felt like it was too much popular media and not enough meat and at times just circled around. This could have been a great long essay.

Text Me When You Get Home reads as part memoir and part chronicle of the evolution and triumph of modern female friendships. While it does what it promises, I didn’t finish it with any overwhelmingly memorable thoughts or profound comments.

It is a read rich in pop culture references and heartwarming stories about the author’s experiences during her lifetime. I think there are parts of her experiences that many women will connect with, such as fledgling friendships at school and rushing for sororities. I did feel that this was a very specific type of woman’s experience with friendship and a high level attempt to generalize all women as sharing this. I would have liked to have seen some intersections with say class or culture or race to give some depth to the observations.

All considered, this was a decent read, just not one I connected with. Thanks to NetGalley and Dutton for my review copy in exchange for an honest opinion (and my friend Kendra for sending me this hard copy ARC as a gift!)

One of the absolute best books I've read so far this year. I immediately sent links to buy it to all of my girlfriends, who have in turn recommended it to a huge number of people. Incredibly insightful commentary about not only her personal experience in friendship but also our culture's perception about female friendships and how that perception is changing. Fantastic.

I was a freshman in high school when I saw Tina Fey's Mean Girls in theaters in 2014, and it isn't an exaggeration to say it changed my entire outlook on girlhood. For the next decade, I looked at other young women in my life with suspicion, treated them like competition, and was always on the lookout for the next attack from a mean girl. Sometimes, plenty of times, that mean girl was me.


"It took me until writing this book to see 'mean girls' as a stereotype, and I still feel so ridiculous for that," Text Me When You Get Home author and journalist Kayleen Schaefer tells Bustle. Like me, she was raised in a culture that taught young women we weren't supposed to be nice to one another. "I literally thought there was something in girls, me included, that made us mean when we were in high school, or first starting out in the workplace. But we aren't. Girls are no nicer or meaner than anyone else," she says.

The misguided sociological perspective that women are somehow naturally nasty, particularly to one another, is one Schaefer attempts to correct in her new book about the evolution of female friendship. Unfortunately, it's a stereotype that dates back much further than Regina George and her Burn Book.

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"Even in the middle ages and early modern times, women were told ‘You can’t be friends. You don’t have the moral center to have a selfless relationship with another women. You can’t handle this,'" Schaefer explains. "That was shocking to me that women have been told we are bad at being friends with each other for that long."

In the 1980s, catfights between women became one of the most popular tropes on television. ABC's primetime soap opera Dynasty became the #1 show in America, largely because of its frequent portrayal of heated verbal and physical confrontations between female characters. Flash forward two decades later, and the rise of the "mean girl" dominated the early 2000s, first with the publication of Rosalind Wiseman's guide to teenage girls famously titled Queen Bees and Wannabes, and later, by the film Mean Girls, which was inspired by Wiseman's book. Throughout history, girls and women have been told time and time again that they are naturally mean, and Schaefer believes that's a serious cultural issue we need to address.

"That was shocking to me that women have been told we are bad at being friends with each other for that long."
"If you tell a young girl they are mean, they sort of believe that is the way they have to be," she explains. "I certainly did. I thought I had to compete with other girls, that is just the way it was."

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Schaefer is far from the only woman to fall victim to this false ideology. In Text Me When You Get Home, which is a balanced mix of memoir, historical study, and cultural critique, the author examines how generations of girls have been convinced, time after time, that they are incapable of meaningful relationships with one another. More importantly in the book, however, Schaefer uses her own friendships, interviews with other women, and examples from pop culture to point out how and why that dated and damning cliché is, at is core, so wrong.

"What I set out to do was to give women a book that validates these friendships," Schaefer explains, "I wanted to make that point, and to try and lift our friendships out of those stereotypes that we have been smothered by for so long."

More than just a critique of our culture's misguided views on women's relationships, Text Me When You Get Home is a beautiful celebration of female friendship, and of the strength women car draw from having meaningful relationships with one another. It honors the many ways in which women support each other, emotionally, mentally, financially, and even, possibly, politically.

"What I set out to do was to give women a book that validates these friendships."
"I don’t think us being friends is the same thing as political organizing," Schaefer clarifies. "Just because we are friends doesn't mean we all vote the same way or think the same way on the same issues." But the author does believe that by strengthening our friendships with one another, women are making it harder for a male-dominated society to ignore them. "I'm not saying we all have to think in lockstep, but I do think it is important for visibility and for getting our voices heard."

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Having female friendships seen and heard is one of the main goals of Text Me When You Get Home. The book's title, the author explains, is something women say to each other in private, a way of expressing their love and support quietly to one another, but there is a shift in the way women are honoring their powerful friendships with one another.

"Now what is happening is we are going from this private text to this public hashtag, this #MeToo and #TimesUp," Schaeder says, "We are saying these bonds have been there. We have always been standing up for each other. Now we are showing everyone that these bonds are there, and that we are changing things because we are doing it together."

These bonds between women that have always been there but have largely gone unacknowledged and invalidated, Schaefer argues, goes beyond the traditional labels we have for them. "Best friend," according to the author, just doesn't cut it. "That is not strong enough for this adult person who has the spare keys to my apartment in case I lock myself out, or the person I cry in her arms when I got fired, or is the person I told about a sexual experience that I don’t feel good about," Schaefer says. "That 'best friend' label isn’t strong enough for this person you can count on for any moment you need them."

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Today's modern women are searching for new ways to express to each other, and to the world, how important their friendships really are. Unlike romantic relationships, there is a limited vocabulary, and an even more limited discussion, that addresses the real, deep bonds between women. "The thing about friendship is that it is a relationship that is not tied by anything but our love for each other," Schaefer says. "There is no legal ties, no blood ties, no financial ties. I think we are doing what we can to explain their importance, and we can use our words to make that point."

"The thing about friendship is that it is a relationship that is not tied by anything but our love for each other."
With Text Me When You Get Home, Schaefer hopes that is exactly what women are inspired to do: use their words to talk, openly and publicly, about their friendships. "We don’t have these universal conversation about friendship," she explains. "Everybody knows the signifiers of romantic relationships: the courtship, the engagement. Everyone knows how it goes because we talk about it so much, but in our friendships we just don’t.

In talking about female friendships and in celebrating the important ways they provide love, support, comfort, and satisfaction, Schaefer hopes to change the stereotype of the "mean girl." In its place, the author hopes to present realistic picture of the incredible bonds women share, even when those bonds change.

"It may not be the same women you went to college women, it may not be the same women you had your first job with," Schaefer admits, "but women will still continue to rely on each other, and these friendships will be as important throughout our lives."

I was immediately drawn to this book because of the title, it's something my friends and I have said to each other many times. I started the book so excited because there was so much I related to, and I really enjoyed reading a book about female friendships!

I knew the book was nonfiction, but I wasn't sure exactly what to expect while reading. I was surprised, and really enjoyed reading about the history of friendship from the Middle Ages until now, and how the importance of friendship has changed even just between my generation and the one before me. I was also very glad when the author acknowledged the differences between race and class. When examining friendships historically, middle class/white women didn't put as much emphasis on friendship as women of color/low SES women did.

Overall I thought this was a fun, informative read, and something I think many women will as well.

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from this book, but the title was intriguing as that’s something that me and my girl friends often say to each other upon our goodbyes. I was excited to read a book about female friendships and how important they are as a woman. Admittedly I didn’t fully finish this book, but nonetheless less I think it’s something any woman should read. It was partly conversational (which I liked and felt myself shaking my head in agreement with) and the other part felt more academic and historic, if that makes sense. I think I would have been more eager to finish it had it kept that easy, conversational tone. With that said, I did enjoy the parts I read and it made me want to hug all my girl friends at once! There truly is nothing quite like a good female friendship.

Kayleen Schaefer explores twenty-first century female friendships with gusto in Text Me When You Get Home. Like a great coffee date with your bestie, it’s the perfect blend of research, analysis, and real-life stories. By the end I was eyeing up that woman in the next lane and thinking, “I wonder what we have in common besides swimming?”

Text Me When You Get Home is a tribute and celebration of being a woman today, from work friendships to the fifth grade BFF that we still call every day.

Schaefer talks about why female friendships are different now than they were fifty years ago. It used to be that when women married and had kids, they moved away from their female friends. They would befriend the mothers of their kids friends, rather than continuing to see the singleton friend from their career days. Now, with the blurring of lines between home, parenting, marriage, and career, women expect to prioritize female friends higher than before.

In pop culture, the female friendship has evolved also. Schaefer discusses TV shows and movies as illustrations of how women connect. From Grey’s Anatomy and Legally Blonde, to Lena Dunham’s Girls, women are making sure friendship is rendered accurately in the media. Schaefer discusses the past predominance of “cat fights” in shows like Dynasty, and the efforts actresses and writers make today to offer a more positive portrayal.
In an age where woman have many more ways to connect, Schaefer points out how our digital ways affect friendships. She tells a story of a woman wishing for a particular group of friends. Instead of bemoaning the lack of the group, she started one herself using Meetup. Schaefer tells of her own efforts to stay connected to a friend in Australia.

More than anything, I found myself remembering two close friends I don’t see anymore. We “broke up” over ten years ago and haven’t seen each other since. We were in our thirties and forties at the time, so this wasn’t teen angst. Both experiences were as traumatic for me as breaking up with a boyfriend.

Schaefer has insight on the progression from the movie Heathers to today’s Mean Girls, and whether that’s an accurate portrayal. But I wish Schaefer would have acknowledged that adult women don’t always stay friends, and the end of that friendship isn’t always pretty. She paints a summarily rosy perspective, which I think is only one side of the story.

My conclusions:
This was a terrific, easy-to-read nonfiction book. If you’re a woman struggling to connect to nonfiction, give it a try. Schaefer makes Text Me When You Get Home accessible, interesting, and eminently relatable. Many times I found myself thinking, “Yes! I’ve felt that way.” It made me regret the friendships I haven’t nurtured, and appreciating the friends who forgive my distractions.

If you’ve got a good friend who likes to read, this is a great one to read together. You’ll find plenty of ideas to discuss, and probably end up with a deeper appreciation of your friendship along the way.

Acknowledgements:
Thanks to NetGalley, Penguin Group Dutton, and the author for the opportunity to read the digital ARC in exchange for this honest review.

I am SO happy to have discovered this book! I think it's a must read for women today - women of every age. It's one I'll be sharing with family and good friends.

I was curious to read this especially after hearing several of the author's publicity interviews. The idea behind the book was interesting and the author had clearly done extensive research. Unfortunately I thought the content could have been explored adequately in a long format article in a magazine like The New Yorker. It makes me wonder if this was an excellent article that was expanded into a book.

Unfortunately I was unable to get through this whole book and DNF. I truly wanted to like this, as it's one of the 'buzziest' books out right now, but the writing just doesn't cut it for me. The overuse of pop culture references really bring down the quality of the book, and it reads like a college Women's Studies class essay. The topic is a great start in the right direction but I think it needs a more delicate hand.

I was pleasantly surprised by this book. I wasn't sure what to expect. I'm interested in perspectives on women's friendships, and yet was put off by the "text me" because texting is not part of my experience. I'm glad I gave this book a try. Schaefer feels here way through her experience and observations about women's relationships and draws on interviews and research from different discipline. This book is not definitive or coming from a place of expertise, but more of an invitation to consider and then celebrate women's relationships.

In a time of increased social disconnection, this sort of curiosity and call for celebrating friendship is critical.... even if you don't have a smart phone.

The premise of this book is fascinating, and I enjoyed reading about female friendship both in a historical context, and through the author's own experiences. But I felt like the execution was a bit lacking. This book wasn't sure if it wanted to be conversational or academic, and randomly inserting personal anecdotes througout more historical text didn't really make sense. I would have preferred this more if it were in an essay format, where one essay could be personal and one could be historical, etc, so that the messages did not become muddled and overlong by trying to get them both across within the same chapter, same page, sometimes same paragraph. Worth a read if highly intrigued by learning more about the way women relate to each other, but I will be keeping an eye out for more books like this in the future.

Kayleen Schaefer has experienced (and occasionally, narrowly survived) most every iteration of the modern female friendship. First there was the mean girl cliques of the '90s; then the teenage friendships that revolved around constant discussion of romantic interests and which slowly morphed into Sex and the City spin-offs; the disheartening loneliness of "I'm not like other girls" friendships with only men; the discovery of a platonic soul mate; and finally, the overwhelming love of a supportive female squad (#squad).

And over the course of these friendships, Schaefer made a startling discovery: girls make the best friends. And she isn't the only one to realize this. Through interviews with friends, mothers, authors, celebrities, businesswomen, doctors, screenwriters, and historians (a list that includes Judy Blume, Megan Abbott, The Fug Girls, and Kay Cannon), Schaefer shows a remarkable portrait of what female friendships can help modern women accomplish in their social, personal, and work lives.

A validation of female friendship unlike any that's ever existed before, this book is a mix of historical research, the author's own personal experience, and conversations about friendships across the country. Everything Schaefer uncovers leads to - and makes the case for - the eventual conclusion that these ties among women are making us (both as individuals and as society as a whole) stronger than ever before.- Goodreads

*short review*

I love the premise of this book and how it stresses the importance of having female friends and building those form of relationships. I strongly believe it is important to have that female friend and if possible uplift other women. But what drew me to this book was the title. This is something that I have been saying for years to all my friends and it put a smile on my face knowing that this simple expression of concern isn't only done by me. 

However, as much as I loved the premise of this book, it felt like I was reading a book about her life and how this has affected her. This was so prominent that I lost interest. What kept the book going was the interviews of everyone but those she knew personally. It added creditably to the point the author was trying to get across and it provided a fairly unbiased point of view.  

Despite this book having so much of the author's life in it, i enjoyed reading the different interviews and seeing the similarities and the big differences of these women experiences. I would use this book as part of a book club because it can create such a huge discussion not only between women but men as well. There are questions that form when reading this book but most importantly there is a desire to connect with your fellow woman. 

This wasn't a bad read but I wanted more interviews, more perspectives and more voices. 

2.5 Pickles