I received an ARC on NetGalley and I'm so glad that I did. I did not expect the depth and reflection on the life of her relationship with her cousin. It was absolutely heartbreaking and beautiful. I think this book defines beautifully what I would argue is our collective Roman Empire: female friendships. All encompassing and all consuming. This book was a beautiful and thoughtful collection of essays on what it's like being a woman, the complexities of life and girlhood, and ultimately the driving force of our lives which is to love and be loved by women.

I was given this book on Netgalley in exchange for a honest review, thank you.

Overall I would rate this book closer to a 4.75 which I have on storygraph. This book is about friendships (mostly female) throughout the authors life.

In the beginning this book was a little slow for me, but after the Sad Girls chapter I was really hooked on this book. I stared to relate to the stories more and how the book intertwined with societal pieces. I also started to see how Lilly viewed her friends as a chosen family like I do too.

My favorite chapter in the book was Mutual Mothering. I laughed and cried to this part of the book because it reminded me of all my close female friends and the same love I share for them as we take care of each other going through life so delicately. I think writing a book as special as this having chapters dedicated to moments with your friends who have made you who you are in your life is a great piece of work for other females and people to grasp the beauty of friendships in different times in your life.

I also think you captured anxieties people face about things like friendships over long distance, being a mother, and having babies in a light that is so relatable.

I love, love, loved this book of essays about female friendship. In two distinct ways, I led a similar life to Lilly Dancyger: we both lost our dad as kids and have been haunted by it ever since, and having been raised like an only child, I put all my eggs in the friendship basket growing up. I still do. My friends were and continue to be my everything. This book resonated with me so much, and I’m hardly like Lilly in most ways: she was raised mostly by her single mom, struggled financially, dropped out of school, partied, and did a lot of drugs in NYC. It’s telling that we could be so drastically different yet her work moved me so significantly. She does not write like a millennial. In fact, she seems so much older than she really is, and this is talked about in the book as well. Lilly feels she was born during the wrong era.

There’s a lot of sadness in these pages - friendships that naturally grow apart as one person wants to hold onto a stale idea of who the other is, horrific deaths, mental illness, loss, and heartbreak. That’s why it’s so important to have female friendships to get through the worst of times. As a mother and wife myself, I still find some of my most happiness in life through friendships. I think the author does a great job of speaking to people who turned to friendships in lieu of family, siblings, parents, etc.

Thank you to Netgalley for the arc in exchange for a honest review. This was a stunning collection of essays, all relating to women and friendships, and the tender power that those relationships can have throughout our lives. I loved reading a book centered around women and the protective, almost sisterly love we can feel toward each other. Overall, a very good read.

I don’t normally read essay collections as it is hard to enjoy all of the essays and it is hard to rate and review them but when i read this part in the synopsis i knew i had to read this one:
“..when tragedy strikes, it’s our friends who will help us survive.”
I care a lot about friendship and since it is such a personal issue i love hearing people’s thoughts about it.
Lilly Dancyger has such a way with words that it is as if it is in prose.
I very much enjoyed my time reading this collection and i’m so glad i’ve read it.

This set of essays was very moving. The author's love for her friends was beautifully conveyed & I enjoyed her exploration of all the types of friendships in various stages of life. My one criticism is that the author seemed very blase about some very serious drug and alcohol abuse to the extent that it romanticized it. I understand the large role it played in her younger life but at times it was a bit much.

Absolutely fantastic book! 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 have so much respect for this book. It's special. The writing about Sabina is smart, aching, sharp, and emotional without feeling trite or cloying, a difficult feat when writing not just an intoxicating friends-like-sisters bond, but especially so when it ends in such deep grief and trauma. This book really embraces friendship (and especially close female friendships) as a means of forming a family, and it's radical--teenage girls showing up for each other when no one else can or will, raising babies and dropping out of school, and waitressing to get a flight to Europe.

Dancyger's first book, largely about the loss of her father and her parents' addictions, is referenced here both thematically (we revisit her parents' heroin addictions, moving across the country, etc) but we also get a glimpse into how writing that book changed Dancyger's life--including her relationship with her mom, who, as Danycger writes so delicately, is a kind o first love, herself.

This book comes with trigger warnings, so definitely venture lightly if those topics could be hard for you; Dancyger isn't over the top, but she is clear and honest, giving some of the more gruesome details the effect of reading journalism. For me as a reader, this ultimately works and serves the book, but I can also imagine having to put it down at other points in my life. Like a first love, the book will be there, with all its strange and wonderful healing and despair.

I admired Lilly's anthology, Burn it Down, as well as her memoir Negative Space. This is an incredible collection that builds nicely on her other work. These essays are moving, funny, heartbreaking, and poignant. She has packed so much into these pages. The cover and portraits included within are a nice addition.

Approaching "First Love" by Lilly Dancyger, I harbored uncertain expectations. However, with every essay, a sense of kinship with the author blossomed within me, as if she was transcribing the narratives of my own friendships. Lilly and I share a similar vantage point in the tapestry of life, our generational context fostering a profound resonance.

Countless times, I've paused to appreciate the bonds of my own friendships in my life, yet Dancyger's essays acted as a poignant reminder of the pivotal role our female friendships play. They are the vessels in which we refine ourselves, sculpting our characters and our journeys. Each friendship etches its own indelible chapter into the book of our existence, weaving together tales of triumph and tribulation.

I wholeheartedly extend this recommendation: "First Love" is a compelling testament to the significance of our female friendships, a literary embrace of shared experiences and heartfelt revelations that you cannot afford to miss.

Reading about female friendships interests me. My friends are dear to me and I always like to think about the ones I've had at different stages in my life. Lilly has written a stunning book about the love of friendships. Most perspectives are from her but also those close to her - with some twists! Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC. Five stars.

I have never cried while reading a non-fiction book until this collection. The absolute heart wrenching feeling of growing up, gaining friends, losing friends, finding old ones again and learning that you'd have to visit graveyards to see others was so incredibly well done and also, painful.

I smiled and felt chilled by the reminder of girlhood and teenage angst while having my heart ripped out of in the same sentence while being reminded I and my friends will never be those girls again, we'll only have the "remember when-" instances to tie us to that past,

A must-read- bring tissues- and go hug your friends, our first loves were really always them anyways.

I will start off by saying I wasn’t sure this collection would reach me the way it might be others and was a little wary, but even with my hesitancy I found myself absolutely adoring every word on every page in these essays. I found myself laughing out loud and tearing up, and ultimately resonating with it way more than I ever could’ve imagined.