Your Favorite Female Friendships as Book Recommendations

Hello lovelies! How are you? Female friendships are one of my favorite things, both on the page and in real life. I just love seeing strong, supportive friendships between girls and women, it always fills my heart with so much joy. Over the last few weeks I’ve been reading all of Emma Mills’ books and I’ve fallen in love with the way she writes about friendship. When I read Foolish Heart, my favorite of all her books, I was amazed by how much the main friendship reminded me of my OTP BFFs Rory Gilmore and Paris Gellar. I immediately wanted to push this book into the hands of every Gilmore Girls fan I know. Since I stan a long list of BFFs and girl gangs I thought it would be fun to match a few of them with books that remind me of their friendships. So here’s some book recommendations based on your favorite famous female friendships, starting with the one that inspired this post!

• Like Rory and Paris, Foolish Hearts’ Claudia and Iris meet at their fancy prep school. As a scholarship kid who’s social life happens mostly outside of the school environment, Claudia (like Rory) feels like a bit of an outsider among her super rich classmates.
• Iris and Paris are basically the same person: Intelligent ✔️ Driven ✔️ Kind of scary ✔️ Severely lacking in people skills ✔️
• Claudia and Iris’s friendship has a pretty rocky start. But just like Rory and Paris go from bitter rivals to true BFF’s over the season, Paige and Claudia relationships comes a long way from Iris threatening to end Claudia in a bathroom.
• Concert bonding moment!
• PSA: If you love Gilmore Girls you just really need to read Emma Mills. She’s got the small town vibes, hilarious dialogue and quirky cast down.

• Cher and Dionne are the queen bee’s of their California high school, but they’re never demonized for their popularity. In Only Love Can Break Your Heart Katherine Webber makes a queen bee her main character and explores the dynamics behind the mean girl stereotype.
• Just like Cher and Dionne, Reiko and Andrea always have each other’s backs, even when they don’t approve of each other’s choices.
• And like Dee, Andrea is 100% here to sass Reiko when needed. (It’s needed)
• All the high school parties, dances and getting ready with the girls scenes gave me big Clueless vibes.
• Reiko and Cher both have complete faith that the right outfit can fix anything.

• Over 4 seasons of Skam, the show and the girls explore a lot of real issues. Nina is Not Okay explores a lot of the same ones, such as like sexual assault, slut shaming, victim blaming, eating disorders and alcohol, in a similarly honest and non judgmental way.
• If you’re favorite girl gang member is Nora, you’ll love Nina’s BFF Beth. She’s the voice of reason in their girl gang and always ready to drop some feminist truth on Nina when she needs it.
• While Nina’s other best friend Zoe’s arc definitley feels like it could’ve happened to Vilde, especially if she hadn’t had strong, female friends in her life.
• Both Skam and Nina is Not Okay are really unflinchingly honest portrayals of teenage girls. They show how strong and brave and loyal they can be, but also how they mess up, make bad decisions or say hurtful things sometimes.

• Maybe it’s the final season of Game of Thrones getting to me, but when I think about female friendship – the first people I think of are Maisie and Sophie. Ok, so maybe it’s my Buzzfeed addiciton that’s getting to me. But either way, their friendship seems fun, supportive and positive – and so is the friendship in Queens of Geek.
• Did I mentioned Queens of Geek is literally about a con? I’m pretty sure Maisie and Sophie’s been to a con together.
• One of the MC’s is an actress!
• Both Sophie and Maisie have been open about their mental health and Queens of Geek has really good mental health rep. (For anxiety)

• SPOILER (For Buffy): So the protagonist of Undead Girl Gang is a teenage witch who literally bring her best friend (and these two other girls) back from the grave. Does that remind you of anyone???
• Speaking of those two other girls, they’re the popular, mean girls the protagonist hates. But just like on Buffy – the popular girl stereotype is dismantled perfectly.
• Just like Buffy and Willow, Mila and Riley are very different – but love each other fiercely and will do anything to keep each other safe.
• Undead Girl Gang’s tone is a perfect mix of Halloween aesthetics, dark humor, sassy girls and creepy moments. Sounds pretty Buffy-esque to me.
• Teenage girls fighting evil? Feminist AF.

Who’s your favorite famous female friends?
What’s your favorite book with female friendship?