These books about friendship are worth sharing with your soul sisters.
I’m writing this article while away with one of my best girlfriends, a friend of 25 years who has been there for me through all the ups and downs of our adult lives. So, female friendship is top of mind. When I am gifted with this type of quality time, I can’t help but notice how therapeutic it is to catch up with an old friend; how comforting it is to reflect back on the shared events of years past; how fun it is to discuss books together; how powerful it is to really listen and be listened to — and I mean truly heard.
There’s no better way to access those feelings than by spending time with friends. But if your friends are out of reach physically, mentally, or emotionally, we’ve thought of the next best thing: Reading.
Books about female friendship take us right there to those intimate moments, the catch-ups, the turning points that really prove loyalty, and what it means to be a true friend — or not. I might not always have time to be with my soul sisters — or they with me — but reading any of these books about friendship is almost as good when life gets crazy.
13 Best Books About Friendship
Sister Stardust by Jane Green (4/5)
When Talitha Getty leaves home to become the next Twiggy in 1960s London, she’s completely lost, even homeless on her first night out of Dorset. What she needed was her wingwoman and BFF from home, Doreen, who she successfully convinced to move into her boarding house in the big city. Arm in arm, the girls venture out to glam parties where Talitha meets someone who holds the key to the music world and shopgirl glamor, only to be followed by an oil heir who whisks her off to Marrakech.
Listen to my podcast with Jane Green.
City of Likes by Jenny Mollen (6/14)
Can a friendship with a well-known influencer really be what it seems? In bestselling author Jenny Mollen’s signature witty voice comes a story of a frazzled mom in Tribeca (the posh NYC neighborhood) who turns to the “like-able” Instagram influencer du jour Daphne to show her the ropes and help her CBD bath bomb company. This is like Jill Kargman’s Momzillas meets, well, all of Jenny Mollen’s fabulous memoirs. It highlights the true colors of befriending a lifestyle celebrity icon.
Cat & Nat’s Mom Secrets: Coffee-Filled Confessions from the Mom Trenches by Catherine Belknap and Natalie Telfer (3/29)
Cat and Nat are best friends, fellow podcasters, and co-authors who have seven kids between them. In fact, they’ve taken their friendship and made it into a brand with a massive following. Women turned out in droves for their world tour before it got paused for Covid. On their podcast, Cat & Nat’s #Momtruths (which I was on!), they chat, laugh, and make the listener feel like they’re at the best party ever. Their second book, Mom Secrets, is just as hilarious as their bestselling first one, Mom Truths. It starts with a behind-the-scenes look at their book tour trying to find male strippers. Trust me. It’s laugh-out-loud funny.
Sula by Toni Morrison
Legendary author and Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison wrote one of the most iconic books about friendship of all time. In Sula, we meet two small-town girls endlessly devoted to each other. Their bond is stronger than the biggest of bullies and the scariest of secrets. Their bond endures as they grow up, even as one of them becomes the pillar of the Black community while the other becomes a pariah. That is, until they’re faced with an unforgivable betrayal. But will it be the end of this lifelong friendship?
The Family by Naomi Krupitsky
I wasn’t surprised when Jenna Bush Hager selected this as a Read with Jenna TODAY Show pick. Both the story and the writing are truly exceptional in this mob-based saga of two friends, Sofia and Antonia, whose families were in the business. When the girls reach adolescence, Naomi Krupitsky shines as a storyteller capturing the intricacies of female friendship especially when boys come into the picture. This ode to friendships when loyalty is tested takes the reader on a tour of American and European 20th-century history. I listened to this book on audiobook — which I highly recommend. It’s sensual, sensory, and spectacular.
Listen to my podcast with Naomi Krupitsky.
Wahala by Nikki May
Anglo-Nigerian Ronke, Boo, and Simi are best friends in this debut novel by Nikki May. The girls suddenly have to contend with a fourth woman, Isobel, in their midst. While she seems to be helping the group at first, her influence causes the tight bonds of the group to fray as any interloper often does. An immersive tale of female friendship, love, relationships, and loyalty, Wahala is fantastic.
Listen to my podcast with Nikki May.
Mom Jeans and Other Mistakes by Alexa Martin
When two friends, Instagram influencer Jude and new mom and former wannabe-surgeon Lauren, decide to move in together along with Lauren’s five-year-old daughter, they’re both lost in their own ways. But these childhood best friends pivot quickly with Lauren launching a mom podcast and Jude learning what it really means to live fully. The author, Alexa Martin, an NFL football player’s wife and author of the successful Playbook series, is someone you know you’d want to be friends with as soon as you start reading this.
Second Half: Surviving Loss and Finding Magic in the Missing by Kelsey Chittick
Kelsey Chittick’s husband, a former NFL linebacker, died of a massive heart attack in front of their kids while jumping with them at a trampoline park. Meanwhile, Chittick was on her first-ever girls trip to Jamaica, the only time she’d left the country, when she found out. She raced from the beach to the airport, traveling from Jamaica back to California in her wet bathing suit, sobbing and vomiting, alone. Who got her to the airport? Who helped her through the following weeks, months, and years? Who planned the memorial service, helped with her kids, and even made her laugh? Her powerful group of female friends. This book is sensational.
Fiona and Jane by Jean Chen Ho
In alternating chapters written like short stories with an interweaving narrative about Fiona Lin and Jane Shen, Fiona & Jane is a beautiful, sometimes heartbreaking story about the lives of two Asian American girls and how they navigate everything from same-sex relationships to parent loss and beyond.
Good Rich People by Eliza Jane Brazier
A juicy tale of deception and subterfuge, this novel is like the Heathers movie with its dark comedy and subversive plot. Lyla and Graham, a wealthy Hollywood Hills couple, like to fill their guest house with a series of hapless women they can mess with. But when Demi comes, someone who isn’t as hapless as they hoped, things unravel in ways no one could anticipate.
Mothertrucker: Finding Joy on the Loneliest Road in America by Amy Butcher
Author Amy Butcher was a successful college professor who was secretly being physically abused by her partner. To escape her own life, she reached out to Joy Wiebe, a 50-year-old ice trucker in Alaska, to ask if she could join her on the road. Wiebe agreed. Butcher and Wiebe embarked on a 400-mile journey, taking the reader along with them. Tragically, weeks before Butcher was supposed to return to Alaska, Wiebe was killed on the road. But the lessons she imparted to Butcher in this short-lived but life-changing friendship were permanent.
My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
Now an HBO series, My Brilliant Friend is about a lifelong friendship between two women in the 1950s in a poor but vibrant neighborhood outside of Naples, Italy. This is the first in Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels series, which spans 60 years of a friendship between two very different women in an ever-evolving time.
Swing Time by Zadie Smith
This book became a hit as soon as it hit shelves in 2016. In it, two childhood friends both dream of being dancers but only one of them succeeds. Sounds like the recipe for a friendship fail! Swing Time tells the story of their close but complicated friendship that evolves as they do but ends abruptly in their early 20s. At the same time, Smith offers a fascinating look at race, art, and identity through their tale and that of others across different time periods and locations.
