4.5/5

I liked this so much!! I picked it up thinking I would read the essays slowly over a couple of months but I couldn’t put it down. The essays are full of pop culture references (Taylor Swift baddies unite) and it felt like staying up all night talking with a good friend. There were also several moments were I was like OH HELLO IT ME so thank you for the therapy Jill! There were a couple of cringe moments and I wasn’t a fan of the HP references (it’s 2022 we truly can stop) but overall really enjoyed this.

Thank you to NetGalley, Atria Books, and Jill Gutowitz for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

These smart and hilarious essays are a must-read. I love all things pop culture and Gutowitz's references brought so many smiles to my face. If you love 1990s/2000s nostalgia, her look at her search for identity as a queer woman will surely resonate with you but you don't have to be LGBTQ to appreciate it. Just be prepared to laugh out loud.

I absolutely adored this book as a take on where we are now as a society. Jill wrote such a fun and thought provoking book to read, and it's a great pick for a 2022 read.

Jill's words made me laugh and cry and feel loved and seen. Favorite chapters include shitting on Entourage, unpacking sapphic paparazzi photos, and exploring the dark side of the internet as a horny teen. Five stars!!

I sooo appreciate books where an author lets me in to view the world through their eyes. Well-written, almost as if I was sitting listening to the author speak, this book was a fun, enlightening, interesting set of essays about the author’s life and how it intersects with pop culture and national events and becoming who she is today. So grateful I got the opportunity to learn more and connect more to others by reading this. Heartfelt thanks to Atria for the advanced copy.

long time follow of jill gutowitz! roommates ended up getting me a paperback copy before I could finish the galley copy. so funny and tender, have been recommending to everyone

First, thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for an eARC in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Second, "Girls Can Kiss Now" was... Just okay. I was born in 1990, a kid as queer as the day is long, and some of this stuff hit hard-- like oh I did that too, oh I thought that too, oh I remember that too! There were some interesting sections, absolutely! Reading it also went quickly! But it just wasn't... what I was looking for, I guess. I can definitely see its appeal though. It reminded me of a gay, nonfiction "Ready Player One" if I'm honest, but not in a wholly complimentary way.

Personally, I didn't find it compelling, just an exercise in traumatic queer nostalgia leading into some kind of queer present. It was easy to read, but it just wasn't for me. Objectively, it isn't a terrible book, and I can see its appeal. Relatedly, I do and have enjoyed some Gutowitz's essays in the past. This, though, just wasn't for me.

3/5

Genuinely difficult to describe how deeply this book hits. A hilarious and heartfelt mix of personal essays and pop culture criticism, Gutowitz dives deep into recent yet formative moments in oft overlooked Queer (or, more specifically, Sapphic) history that made her who she is today. So many of these dissections and anecdotes about 2000s era TV shows, movies, and Gutowitz's personal experiences mimicked my own in a way that felt so visceral I couldn't believe this book wasn't written for me. Except it was written for me, actually. In fact, it was written for so many of us terminally online nightmare-people with so much to figure out and even more love to give once we've gotten there. Automatically recommended for any young woman seeking validation for rewatching Rachels Weisz and McAdams in Disobedience a cool 200 times for their stellar performances and Definitely Nothing Else.

These hilarious essays by notable funny person Jill Gutowitz explore lesbians in pop culture, a changing social landscape, and Gutowitz's painfully honest memories of coming out and finding her place in the world of entertainment. Millennials (and particularly queer millennials) will recognize the cringiest moments of the early 2000s and worst corners of celebrity pop culture. I laughed plenty and was also touched by Gutowitz's ability to lay some of her darkest moments on the page.

I struggled to connect with this book. I requested it because I thought the millennial humor coupled with her experience being gay would make for a good read. I have been trying to add a few more nonfiction titles to my reading list, but this one missed the mark a bit for me.

Thank you to Atria and NetGalley for an e-arc for review.

3 out of 5 stars.

Disclosure: I received a free copy of this book through Netgalley. What follows is my honest opinion.

Girls Can Kiss Now is a hilarious and unexpectedly raw look at the life of Lesbian Twitter Goddess Jill Gutowitz. Mostly known for her hot takes on Twitter and Taylor Swift think pieces; pop culture commentator Jill Gutowitz has written a brilliant collection of essays that I simply could not put down. Ever since she could get her hands on check-out stand tabloids, Jill has had an obsession with celebrities and pop culture. In this amazing collection of essays Jill unpacks all the ways the media she's consumed since adolescence has informed her understanding of herself and the world she inhabits. The essays bounce from absolutely hilarious to extremely personal and vulnerable. This book was a joy to read and I recommend it to anyone who came to understand themself as a young queer person in the early aughts.

TW: Rape and Sexual Assault

Absolutely loved this. I think it's what I wanted "The 2000s Made Me Gay" to be, and that's probably because Jill and I are closer in age. We have more similar references, from Taylor Swift to Orange is the New Black to so much more. I appreciated her insight and essays, all of which are replete with Jill's usual cringe humor. (I say that as a good thing!) I did feel like by the end it was kind of losing the thread, but maybe that's more about the order of the essays.

My favorite quote: "coming out frees you in ways that i’m not sure any straight person ever fully experiences.”

ARC provided by Simon and Schuster through NetGalley.

There is a new trend of sapphic non-fiction where queer women contextualize their identity and coming out in the landscape of 2000s pop culture, and I'm here for it. "Girls Can Kiss Now" is written by Jill Gutowitz, who writes for publications like Vulture and the New Yorker. While some of the pop culture references are the same as those explored in "The 2000s Made Me Gay" and "Greedy," I found that Jill spoke more in-depth about ideas like the lesbian canon. One essay, "One Day You'll All Be Gay" gave important commentary on queer speculation versus "outing" (a la Perez Hilton) that I hope permeates the Gaylor/Kaylor discourse on Swiftok immediately.

Gutowitz also shares some intensely personal stories about her trauma, coming out, and falling in love that any queer would find deeply relatable and deeply moving.

This book was so many things at once! Sweet & sassy, frivolous & down to Earth, Relatable & about celebrities who live unattainable lives, memoir & pop culture essays. Loved it!

Oh this one hit hard. While this is just a great read and breakdown of how pop culture has influenced a lot of lesbian culture, a lot of what was mentioned and talked about felt like it was pulled out of my very own experience and it kind of felt like a punch to the gut.

There were a few things I took issue with but overall I really connected to it and enjoyed reading it.

I've really gotten into queer nonfiction last year and I'm so glad that my streak of great nonfiction reads is continuing with Girls Can Kiss Now! Gutowitz's essays were at times charming, at times hilarious and at times so heartbreakingly vulnerable that I couldn't help but highlight every other sentence.
There's a lot of love in here but also a lot of pain, paired with witty insights into the life (and evolution) of queerness in the public eye and I think that everyone will be able to find at least a few essays to relate to in this book!
There's also so much to be said for how Gutowitz reminisces on finding out where you can fit on the identity and sexuality spectrum which was one of the highlights for me while reading - these things are rarely linear so it was lovely to hear someone else talk about it in more of a fluid way.

I've been following Jill on social media for what feels like forever at this point, so the second I found out that she was publishing a book of essays I simply knew I had to read it.

I can confidently say that I want to continue reading Jill's words forever. Reading these essays felt like talking to one of your best friends. Many passages stuck out to me and I immediately had to scribble the words down or take a photo of them, knowing that I'd want to savor them long after finishing this book. I found myself reading full pages out loud to my roommate (ex: filling the holes in your heart with Jonas Brothers songs??? Brilliant. Me.) and have now told everyone I possibly can to read this book.

I'm a hard sell on any non-fiction book, I'll be honest, but this collection of essays was perfect for my millennial bisexual heart.

The essays reminded me that I am not alone in my experiences in the world. I thought it was just going to be a light hearted reference to lots of pop culture references, and instead I felt quite a few deep emotions while reading this book!

Also five stars just for the T-swift references alone.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for this free eARC!

It was such a pleasure to be able to read about the very important, but not talked about enough, intersection of pop culture and queer culture in the early 2000s. Although humorous, it had moments of poignancy I really appreciated, including how sapphic longing can be a way of holding ourselves back and how our relationships to celebrities have changed since the pandemic. Something I would have wished for from the book was a less abrupt ending that tied the overarching narratives together better.

These essays are deeply personal and well-structured, but can get repetitive. Really, my issue was the voice - it's the kind of poppy, buzzy, Millennial narration that works well for a Buzzfeed "Here Are The Top Ten Cat-Celebrity Comparisons You Need to See" style article, but it's a voice that is a - already coming out of fashion and definitely easy to ID as millennial and b - becomes more and more irritating as you read.