This will be a contender for one of the best books I read this year for sure. The writing is vivid and lyrical, especially in the nostalgic '90s setting. It’s edgier than typical teen books, with a tone that recalls the WLW stories I loved growing up. The Jewish family dynamic adds warmth, balancing out the intense moments.

The language, true to its time, might be jarring for some, but it feels essential to the story. Watching the main character, Hannah, make mistakes is tough but immersive. This book pulls you in emotionally and doesn’t let go. 5 stars—if you love this genre, don’t miss it.

"I want to belong so much, I end up not belonging at all"

I was not expecting the emotional rollercoaster this book brought me! This coming of age story shows the ups and downs of Hannah, suffocated in her childhood town and fleeing across the country with her first love. For a debut novel, it does a fantastic job of putting the viewers in the shoes of Hannah. We get to see a well-rounded portrayal of everything that makes her, her. Which isn't always pretty. She falls head over heels in love with the first girl she's ever crushed on, and allows herself to get swept up in the fantasy of living somewhere she can be authentically herself for the first time. She burns down bridges with loved ones in doing so and lets her girlfriend Sam take the reins of her life. All is well in her eyes, until slowly everything starts falling apart one by one and she struggles to put the pieces back together again.

This book is incredibly moving and shows how identity is so integral to a young girl living in a place where she is forced at every corner to be who she is not. Pacing was smooth and fast and I found myself bingeing most of it at once. My only issue with the novel was it's hesitancy to commit to some of the darker themes it touches on, like sex-work. It took me a little out of the story when everything was so clean-cut, but the raw vulnerability that shows up with Hannah and Bubbe's relationship definitely balances out the novel. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for my ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Shoshana von Blanckensee's "Girls Girls Girls" is a poignant coming-of-age story that beautifully captures the complexities of young love, friendship, and identity. Set in 1990s San Francisco, the novel follows Hannah, a queer Jewish teenager grappling with first love, family secrets, and the burgeoning awareness of her own sexuality.

Von Blanckensee's prose is both lyrical and raw, effortlessly transporting readers back to a specific time and place. The vibrant descriptions of San Francisco, from the fog-shrouded streets to the vibrant queer scene, evoke a strong sense of nostalgia. The dialogue is sharp and authentic, capturing the awkwardness and intensity of teenage relationships with remarkable honesty.

I must say that it took a while for me to warm up to the novel, but I voraciously devoured the second half of the book. Especially because Hannah's close and unconditional relationship with her Bubbe resonated with me deeply.

"Girls Girls Girls" is a poignant and ultimately hopeful story about different kinds of love, finding your voice, embracing your true self, and forging your own path in the world.

Thanks to Net Galley and the publisher for the ARC!

this was a pretty good book. It was a coming of age book about different cultures, and queer representation. I think it was a bit more of a YA book than i thought it would be. I think the themes were good and writing was also good, but again too YA fir me

Thank you to NetGalley, to the author, and to the publisher for this complimentary ARC in exchange for my honest review!!!

What an incredible debut novel from Shoshana von Blanckensee. This book is set in the mid-nineties and follows Hannah as she moves from a small town in New York to San Francisco to explore her queer identity free from the limitations of her family. At only eighteen, she doesn't fully know who she is or what she wants, and seeing her growth as she goes through the good and bad of self-exploration was moving.

I especially loved Hannah's relationship with her dear Bubbe. Their bond was so special and grounded the story. I enjoyed this book a lot and would definitely recommend it. Thank you to Penguin Group Putnam and Netgalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

'Where is home? It’s nowhere, which means it could be anywhere. It’s wherever I am. I’m home.'

I loved this book. It's definitely right up my street, lesbian coming of age that follows Hannah who is Jewish as she runs away from Long Beach, NY to San Francisco to be with Sam, her childhood sweetheart.

They quickly run into issues with finding work or somewhere to live, so they start stripping and Hannah also begins working as an escort for Chris, an older butch lesbian.

I loved seeing how Hannah grappled with her queerness and Jewishness, and her relationships with her mom, bubbe, and sister, which felt like the true heart of the story.

Parts reminded me of Margo’s Got Money Troubles by Rupi Thorpe in terms of examining how sex work can be a matter of survival while not shying away from the toll it can take on the person doing it.

I especially enjoyed seeing Hannah start to make more connections in the queer community and come out of her shell a bit more. It made me a bit sad to think of cities having become even more unaffordable for queer people and queer venues like lesbian bars dying out.

This is such a good book overall, a wonderful debut, and I definitely recommend it!

Hannah and Sam are best friends in Long Beach, New York. Unbeknownst to their families, they are also secret girlfriends. They have hatched a plan to move across country to San Francisco as soon as they graduate from high school. They hope in San Francisco they will be able to live openly, free from the judgment of Hannah’s religious mother. But it means leaving Hannah’s beloved grandmother behind.

The two go through with their plan, but they find that it is not so easy to live on their own. They struggle to make money, and end up making choices they never would have expected just a few months before. Soon, the pressure of making money and building a life starts to drive Hannah and Sam apart — and Hannah must confront what life in San Francisco would look like without her best friend and first love.

This is a touching and perceptive story about simultaneously exploring your identity at the same time you are navigating your first serious relationship. I also appreciated the depiction of the relationship between Hannah and family, as Hannah both tries to carve out a new life but feels the push and pull of her grandmother, sister, and mother. The book also captures well what a slice of queer life in San Francisco was like in the ‘90s.

Highly recommended.

4.5/5. This was a very beautiful, emotional book. I enjoyed watching Hannah's character development and felt even her narration voice matured as the book went on. I learned a lot about San Francisco too!

I loved this book! Lots of bad and scary things happened but the whole thing still felt like a warm hug. The narrative voice was beautiful, the setting and characters were rich and developed, and the conflicts and stakes were compelling. I love a road-trip story so I was pulled in from the beginning, and the life and relationships Hannah built for herself in San Francisco and Long Beach kept me engrossed.

Shoshana von Blanckensee does a fantastic job in writing this book, it had that elmeent that I was looking for and was hooked from the first page. I was engaged with what was happening enjoyed the way the characters worked with this story. It had that feel that I wanted and was glad I was able to read this.

Man, I really thought I was going to love this one. Von Blanckensee sets up some really compelling conflicts for her protagonist: Hannah loves but also feels alienated from her homophobic family, who she ditches in favor of an imagined queer community that she can't quite connect with, and reluctantly takes up sex work under pressure from her girlfriend Sam (a character I can only describe as detestable) and the looming threat of poverty and homelessness. The only people she can really connect with are her grandmother and Sam, but these connections are no relief to her—she can't admit anything to her grandmother, who is dying of cancer, and Sam is controlling, judgemental, a social butterfly and a chronic cheater who takes naturally to everything Hannah struggles with.

But none of those conflicts come to much of anything. Hannah's family and abandoned best friend forgive her easily when she reconnects with them, and she and Sam end the story as best friends again with only the barest acknowledgement of how terrible Sam has been. (Seriously, she does maybe one nice thing the whole book, and it's in the last fifty pages!) Despite everyone's warnings, nothing bad happens to Hannah in the tough neighborhood she lives in, the slum lord she rents from is nice if slightly condescending, and the walk-in closet sized apartment is clean and cozy. Feeling awkward and embarrassed is about as it gets for her stripping, and she conveniently finds a a fulfilling above-minimum-wage job as soon as the escorting situation with butch sugar daddy Chris falls out (and, even more conveniently, this job provides her with the cool gay friends she's been searching for). I'm reminded a little of another ARC I read recently, Woodworking by Emily St James, which I had a similar complaint about. It's hard for me to feel satisfied by a book that brings up all these heavy topics but doesn't dig into them—it just feels a little defanged.

Another aspect that didn't quite sit right with me was the depiction of Chris, who is portrayed as pathetic, even disgusting. Part of the problem is that she's awkward and dishonest and twice Hannah's age, and part of the problem is that she thinks she knows Hannah far more intimately than she really does—but part of the problem, too, is that she's butch and working class and that she struggles with addiction. (To be fair to von Blanckensee, Hannah's eventual love interest is also butch and working class, and she's portrayed very positively though she doesn't take up nearly as much of the narrative as Chris does.) Chris also sexually assaults Hannah, which is not depicted graphically but is dealt with only minimally. She owns up to it and apologizes in a short conversation, and it is mentioned maybe once or twice otherwise. Maybe that wouldn't bother other people, but it did bother me.

Nonetheless, while it was a little disappointing, I did enjoy reading this. The first hundred pages or so (when the aforementioned really compelling conflicts were set up) were really great, and I read the whole thing in maybe two days. I found the prose very smooth, nothing to complain about. Some of the relationships—with April and with Bubbe, for example—were sensitively and movingly handled. And, as with Woodworking, for some people the un-gritty-ness may be a plus. Could be a good read for people who have moved on from purely feel-good YA novels and cozy romance reads but aren't ready for or interested, say, in Michelle Tea or Sarah Schulman.

I absolutely fucking loved this book. I just may have to preorder my own copy. It feels weird to me to know that fiction set in the 1990s is now categorized as historical fiction, but I need more fiction set in this time period. I went to high school in the 1990s in a conservative suburb in Oregon, so I related quite a bit to the characters, though I'm bi and not Jewish.

Girls Girls Girls is a coming-of-age story about a Jewish girl named Hannah who lives in Long Beach, New York, a closeted lesbian who's never fit in and fights against the boxes she's been stuck in. She is in love with her best friend Sam, the only other queer she knows. She constantly clashes with her mother, who turned Orthodox when her father died. She knows she's Jewish, she just doesn't want to be Jewish like her, and she knows she's a woman, but she doesn't want to be a woman like her mom. Her grandmother and herself have a tight bond.

She makes a pact with Sam to move out to San Francisco in a van when they turn 18. Struggling to make ends meet, they turn to stripping, which Sam is good at and Hannah feels trapped by. Gradually, her codependent relationship with Sam fades away as the two girls grow apart. Hannah comes out of her shell, bounces from an escort job to work on an all-queer painting crew, gets over her culture shock and finds herself in the city just as she gets crushing news from home.

The writing was beautiful and I felt as if I really got to know Hannah and her struggles with young love and identity, her found family and the journey she took with her birth family and accepting herself. This was clearly a book of the author's heart and it made sense that the author's also an oncology nurse for a day job.

This is the kind of book that will stay with me for a long time. It made me think and moved me. One of my most anticipated releases of 2025.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the gift of an early preview. I am leaving this review voluntarily.

I really enjoyed this read! I feel like I haven’t read many books that take place in this time period and so I appreciated the historical backdrop that wasn’t all that long ago. I was expecting a little bit more grit (a la The Hop by Diana Clark), but I liked seeing Hannah and Sam’s relationship change and shift, and I loved Hannah’s relationship with her bubble. The writing in this was excellent and I look forward to reading more from this author!

I was in love with this story right from the start. I felt immersed in the drama of the friendship and secrets shared between the main characters. The self-discovery throughout the book was written so well. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.

I didn’t love this but I always appreciate a good River Phoenix reference. Hannah’s relationship with her Bubbe was also very sweet. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC.

Thank you netgalley and to the publishers for the ARC. I enjoyed the story and plot of the book. It was engaging and the dialogue help drive the story. I enjoyed the ending of the story and would totally read another book by the author.

This might be the best book I read all year, and it’s mid December. How this author writes sometimes, I read a line and I want to scream, it’s that good. The first few chapters skip back in time to middle/high school in the 90s, you can hear the Velcro on that Trapper Keeper rip. The nostalgia is a shotgun blast. I want to quote EVERYTHING, it’s lyrical, it’s non-stop. The words are alive.

This is edgier and more adult than a typical teen book. Probably because of being set in the 90s, the target audience is older. Tonally, the vibe is a perfect match to what I (a millennial) used to read in the scant WLW genre back when I was in high school. It starts out like the rough and terminally cool Ariel Schrag graphic novels, and morphs into more of a Michelle Tea book. If you know you know. The author knows what she’s going for, and it hits.

The main character being from a Jewish family and how prominently that is featured adds a warm touch, which I also enjoyed and rounds out the more intense scenes. I just read Tomorrow & Tomorrow & Tomorrow and that element is similar in the two books (but not really in any other way), the grandma factor.

Also something to keep in mind, and the author addresses this in the foreword, but the language here is of the times. If you didn’t live through it, it might be jarring. I agree with the choice to include it, there’s no other way to write about the past. When you try to erase or revise history, the present forgets and the future doesn’t learn, doomed to make the same mistakes.

Speaking of mistakes, watching these kids make them is HARD. Especially hard because, peppered in, are little touchstones from their childhood that were also a part of mine. It’s called Girls Girls Girls for a reason. Quite a few reasons. Hannah is put through the wringer, highs and lows, and I felt it all as if I was standing in the room next to her.

This book has a beating heart. It does what all great books should - it transports you so far into itself you forget reality. An emotional experience, but a fantastic one. 5 stars, no notes, if this is your genre, get it now.

*An uncorrected proof of this book was provided by the publisher at the reviewer’s request in exchange for a fair and uncompromising review.

This book really hit home for me. I feel as though I was the target audience for this one, and it exceeded all of my expectations. It was an absolutely beautiful and touching story. I loved reading the exploration of the main character’s relationship with both lesbianism and Judaism. This book did an excellent job at setting the scene and differentiating characters. Every person was real and raw and layered. I really cannot recommend it enough!

A huge thank you to NetGalley & the publishers for this ARC :)

"Girls Girls Girls" by Shoshana von Blanckensee is a coming-of-age novel set between San Francisco and New York. The story follows two best friends who begin a romantic relationship and flee to California after graduating.

Hannah, the protagonist, seeks freedom after growing up in an Orthodox Jewish family. Along with her girlfriend Sam, she navigates life in the Bay Area, finding solace in the local queer community while trying to make ends meet.

This book ultimately explores the concept of family—both the families we are born into and the ones we choose for ourselves as adults. It delves into the themes of finding a home, discovering oneself and one’s strength, and experiencing love in various forms, whether with a grandmother (bubbe), a girlfriend, a sister, or a best friend.

I was pleasantly surprised by this debut novel. The depth of sentiment, love, and compassion truly caught me off guard. The book's description doesn’t do the story justice. As a queer person around the same age as the protagonist, I expected a nostalgic and somewhat downbeat narrative. Instead, it turned out to be more than just a tale of a messy narrator; it is bright and full of love.

I highly recommend this book, especially to fans of Michelle Tea's work, who will appreciate its nostalgic reflections. Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Group Putnam for the ARC.