I read this slowly. A chapter here and a chapter there. I love this idea of our friends as our first loves. Both very poignant and surprisingly funny, I enjoyed every essay.

First Love has been highly anticipated on my list of memoir/essay collections for 2024. The sum of the fifteen essays in this collection made for a very cathartic, thought provoking reading experience. The photo on the book cover has a fittingly nostalgic feel to it - it's the author (centre) and two of her friends sitting on an apartment stoop and just looking at it evokes such a warmth and longing for youth, it's as if you yourself were there. Lilly gives due to the profound nature of female friendships in her life and succeeds in showing us for 'love stories they truly are' (from the book description). Absolutely loved this collection and look forward to picking up a physical copy from which to read when I need a salve. If you listened to Call Your Girlfriend or read Big Friendship and found yourself wanting more, First Love will deliver. These essays are as endearing and complex as our friendships can be. Thanks to Penguin Random House & NetGalley for providing an advance copy to review.

Lilly Dancyger's "First Love" is a deeply touching and heartfelt collection of essays that delve into the intricacies of love in its many forms. Each essay is a testament to the power of vulnerability and the profound connections that shape our lives. Dancyger's writing is raw, honest, and beautifully evocative, making it impossible not to be moved by her words.

Throughout the collection, Dancyger explores love from various angles—romantic, familial, and self-love—each essay offering a unique perspective and emotional depth. Her ability to capture the complexities of love and its impact on our lives is truly remarkable. The essays are not just stories; they are lived experiences that resonate on a deeply personal level.

Several essays brought me to tears. Dancyger's ability to convey deep emotions with such authenticity makes her stories incredibly relatable. Whether she is writing about the joy of newfound love, the pain of loss, or the journey towards self-acceptance, her words strike a chord that lingers long after you have finished reading.

"First Love" is not just a collection of essays; it is a journey through the heart. Dancyger's eloquent prose and unflinching honesty make this book a must-read for anyone who has ever loved and lost, struggled and triumphed. It is a poignant reminder of the power of love and the strength it gives us to keep moving forward.

This woman named Lily What's about her life and her friendships with other women. Her first love was her cousin Sandra. They were inseparable, but her mother and father moved to California when she Was five. Mother Got a divorce Move to new york and then back to californi Her father died when she was twelve. Her mother was really never around She became very wild. She visited her cousin in Philadelphia. Or not under crossing had a very different l Life. She became very involved in the underground in new york city. She got into music did drugs and alcohol. She would go to bars instead of going to School. She would go into a lesbian bar.And lower E a s t. She had friends who were very close with her. Somehow she made it to college. Her friends were very close to her and they helped her out a lot of different crisis and they would sit on the fire escape. When Her cousin died. She became very Hard for her to Function. Her friends were there an alcohol was part of it. These women were Very close to her and helped her out good time in the bad times This was a great book very interesting how she made it through

i really enjoyed the memoir parts of this, but where it became more essay-like it didn't work as well for me.

The relationships of girls and women to each other are often seen as fluff in the margins of the great hetero love main story. Lilly Dancyger’s essays give the rose of first love to the girls and women that shaped her life. That rose comes with thorns. The archetypical first love is as euphoric as it is annihilating, and the same can be true in the love of friends, found family and biological family. Dancyger has captured some of the ineffable in her essays on love and loss and creation. This book would make a beautiful gift for the first loves in your life, no matter who they may be.

I received a digital advance reader copy from NetGalley and The Dial Press, an imprint of Random House, in exchange for an honest review.

I adored First Love. This collection of essays was like a warm hug. I eel like it isn't often enough that we get nonfiction collection focusing around platonic love, at least not as often as romantic love, so this one was refreshing. I highly recommend this collection!

Thank you to NetGalley and The Dial Press for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

A poignant collection of writings from a woman who experienced so much loss early in her life. Some are short and some examine the theme of friendship more in depth. Overall, I really enjoyed that she shared her perspective in such a positive way on so many facets of girlhood and friendships. Thank you NetGalley for providing the ARC.

this book has been sitting on my shelf ever since i received my arc copy and i just hadn’t been in the mood to read it. i came on here to read a few goodreads reviews and saw one that said it was a mix between Just Kids and Everything I Know About Love and it immediately convinced me to pick it up. that reviewer could not have been more spot on. this book captured the essence of both of those books and the feelings i had while reading them. i laugh, i cried, i enjoyed every second of this.

add this to your list of books to read in your twenties. right now.

This is a homage to the different types of friendships you experience throughout your life. My eyes teared up at least 4 times while reading this. Loved it.

What I took away from this book; Don’t take your friendships for granted. Know when to move on from certain friendships, even when it’s difficult. Sometimes you grow apart from friends that you had a deep connection with for years. Other friendships last a lifetime.

At times, it felt like a grittier version of Dolly Alderton's "Everything I Know About Love," and I mean that in the best way possible. Although friendship is the main theme, the essays also explore a wide range of topics including family dynamics, social media, bisexuality, the complexities of feminine emotions, dealing with grief and loss, addiction, shared motherhood, and other aspects of life. Some essays are tough to read due to their raw honesty, while others tug at your heartstrings, making you want to hug every friend who has been there for you, even those you're no longer in touch with.

Dancyger's writing explores the complexities of female friendships and the many ways we deal with love and loss. This collection highlights the strength of love and friendship through all the phases of growing up.

The opening essay made me cry. Smart, vivid, feminist writing about the power of female friendships. Highly recommend Lilly Dancyger's memoir in essays!

This made me want to immediately pick up my phone and talk to all of my girl friends. Is there anything more special in life than female friendships ? Doubt it.
This captured all the different aspects, potential and feelings of that in a way I’d never thought to describe. Really special

I loved this book of essays. I listened along with reading the text and loved the combo. Great narrator (the author?). The essays were vulnerable and honest and covered a wide range of topic and types of friendship. Adored them.

If there is one thing about me, it's that I will read any book that is a commentary on friendship, especially complex female friendships. Its a topic that is close to my heart and one I find so fascinating. So when I heard of this book, I was instantly on board. Essays seemed like the perfect way to talk about the innumerable ways that friendships weave into our lives. However, these essays were so discordant and I don't feel that they were succinctly tied together or had a tight overarching theme to them. I was left feeling disappointed by the content, the writing, and the flippancy shown in many of the essays.

Thank you to Netgalley for my ARC.

Thank you to Penguin Randomhouse for an e-ARC of First Love in exchange for an honest review.

This collection of essays focuses on the author’s experiences growing up, moving and the people involved in her life in the 90’s and 00’s.
I was really hoping to read a beautiful collection of stories and essays surrounding strong and impactful women, and I kind of got that.
Sometimes the importance of the women was overshadowed by the author’s emphasis on pop culture and party culture. The themes overlapped slightly in her tales of friendship, but I felt it was more about how wild her teen and young adult life was. It allowed for some interesting stories, but it just wasn’t what I was expecting from the book which led to a little disappointment.

I’m familiar with the time era that the author wrote about, which allowed for some nostalgia, and the essays are very approachable! If you are looking for a book of essays that transport you back to the good ole days, filled with musical and theatre references you might enjoy this one!

Lilly Dancyger is the coolest girl you'll encounter, or at least the coolest girl that I've heard about. I don't think girls that cool could have existed in the suburban Scottsdale high school I went to, stuck as it was in a land of malls and residential areas. Dancyger was living in New York, where she was comfortably hanging out in dive bars at fourteen, something that probably couldn't happen in a place where you'd have to ask your mom for a ride. She may have dropped out of high school but she still managed to get a full ride to a private university; we don't inhabit the same universe. So when it began to dawn on me that while this book was about friendship, it was mostly about Lilly Dancyger, I was only mildly annoyed by the bait and switch.

Like most of us, Dancyger had intense friendships in childhood and in her teenage years and early twenties. She's good at capturing how intense those relationships can be and how they ebb and flow, so that the person you shared every thought with one year, is less important the next. There are several other topics addressed in this book, with grief being on of the most prevalent, including grief following a violent death. Dancyger is young and so there's a bit of stretching needed to make this memoir-in-essays work, with a friend writing embarrassingly complimentary segments in one essay. There's little universality here, these are essays about Lilly Dancyger, her life and her thoughts. I'm still looking for a book taking a look at friendship and the role friendship plays in our lives, but I did enjoy reading about Dancyger's life well enough.

Short story collections are often hit or miss for me but this one I generally enjoyed. I loved how Dancyger wove her relationship with her cousin throughout the book and some of her stories from her younger days read like a beautiful work of fiction.

i will gobble up every piece of content about female friendships but i do wish this one had been more focused on the friendships themselves rather than solely the author, or that it had felt more connected overall.

A fairly bouncy collection of essays that feels more like a cohesive memoir, even if it's nonlinear. It did repeat itself often, and repeatedly hit on the same points that obviously hold a lot of significance for the author (drugs and drinking in the park, mourning on the fire escape, etc.) but which become tiring to read about so many times. The essay about sad young literary women/Sylvia Plath was the strongest and my favorite, I think there was a lot to resonate with here for many readers.