I’ll Have What She’s Reading: Galentine’s Day Book Recs

We’ve made it through the longest, darkest month of the year, and it’s a week until Valentine’s Day – meaning it’s Galentine’s Season! What better way to celebrate your female friendships than with a reading list all about women we love. Now, before we get into it, I should clarify I’m not recommending your typical love stories. This love doesn’t necessarily differentiate between romantic or platonic. It doesn’t bring you chocolates and flowers to your committed, healthy relationships, partnerships, or friendships. Sometimes love is ugly, frenzied, agonizing. It makes you manic, rips out your hair, bite your nails, stalk you friends to know where they are at all times.

Basically, if you’re looking for a guaranteed happy ending, these might not be the love stories for you. Beyond the mad women’s ball of fiction selected, I’ve also included some nonfiction recommendations that highlight the power of female friendships, in case anyone needs a reminder that there are multiple forms of love beyond romantic. Don’t worry, I’ll be gentle and start slow.

Normal People, by Sally Rooney

GoodReads Rating: 3.81

At school Connell and Marianne pretend not to know each other. He’s popular and well-adjusted, star of the school soccer team while she is lonely, proud, and intensely private. But when Connell comes to pick his mother up from her housekeeping job at Marianne’s house, a strange and indelible connection grows between the two teenagers – one they are determined to conceal.

A year later, they’re both studying at Trinity College in Dublin. Marianne has found her feet in a new social world while Connell hangs at the sidelines, shy and uncertain. Throughout their years in college, Marianne and Connell circle one another, straying toward other people and possibilities but always magnetically, irresistibly drawn back together. Then, as she veers into self-destruction and he begins to search for meaning elsewhere, each must confront how far they are willing to go to save the other.

Sally Rooney brings her brilliant psychological acuity and perfectly spare prose to a story that explores the subtleties of class, the electricity of first love, and the complex entanglements of family and friendship.

Everything I Know About Love, by Dolly Alderton

GoodReads Rating: 4.05

Boy Parts, by Eliza Clark

GoodReads Rating: 3.79

Irina obsessively takes explicit photographs of the average-looking men she persuades to model for her, scouted from the streets of Newcastle.

Placed on sabbatical from her dead-end bar job, she is offered an exhibition at a fashionable London gallery, promising to revive her career in the art world and offering an escape from her rut of drugs, alcohol, and extreme cinema. The news triggers a self-destructive tailspin, centered around Irina’s relationship with her obsessive best friend, and a shy young man from her local supermarket who has attracted her attention…

Boy Parts is the incendiary debut novel from Eliza Clark, a pitch-black comedy both shocking and hilarious, fearlessly exploring the taboo regions of sexuality and gender roles in the twenty-first century.

I wrote my own review of Boy Parts. You can read it here: Oh Look – Another Manic Woman.

Sex and Rage, by Eve Babitz

GoodReads Rating: 3.6

To purchase any of the books on this list, follow the link below to my Galentine’s Day List on Amazon:

Text Me When You Get Home: The Evolution and Triumph of Modern Female Friendship, by Kayleen Schaefer

GoodReads Rating: 3.47

From Girls to Parks and Recreation to Bridesmaids, the female friendship has taken an undeniable front seat in pop culture. Text Me When You Get Home is a personal and sociological perspective – and ultimately a celebration – of the evolution of the modern female friendship. These are the love stories between the closest women in our lives – romance not included.

Kayleen Schaefer has experienced (and occasionally, narrowly survived) most every iteration of the modern female friendship. First there was the mean girl cliques of the ’90s; then the teenage friendships that revolved around constant discussion of romantic interests and which slowly morphed into Sex and the City spin-offs; the disheartening loneliness of “I’m not like other girls” friendships with only men; the discovery of a platonic soul mate; and finally, the overwhelming love stories of a supportive female squad.

And over the course of these friendships, Schaefer made a startling discovery: girls make the best friends. And she isn’t the only one to realize this. Through interviews with friends, mothers, authors, celebrities, businesswomen, doctors, screenwriters, and historians, Schaefer shows a remarkable portrait of what female friendships can help modern women accomplish in their social, personal, and work lives.

A validation of female friendship unlike any that’s ever existed before, this book is a mix of historical research, the author’s own personal experience, and conversations about friendships across the country. Everything Schaefer uncovers leads to – and makes the case for – the eventual conclusion that these ties among women are making us (both as individuals and as society as a whole) stronger than ever before.

A Certain Hunger, by Chelsea G. Summer

GoodReads Rating: 3.8

Food critic Dorothy Daniels loves what she does. Discerning, meticulous, and very, very smart, Dorothy’s clear mastery of the culinary arts make it likely that she could, on any given night, whip up a more inspired dish than any one of the chefs she writes about. Dorothy loves sex as much as she loves food, and while she has struggled to find a long-term partner that can keep up with her, she makes the best of her single life, frequently traveling from Manhattan to Italy for a taste of both.

But there is something within Dorothy that’s different from everyone else, and having suppressed it long enough, she starts to embrace what makes Dorothy uniquely, terrifyingly herself. Recounting her life from a seemingly idyllic farm-to-table childhood, the heights of her career, to the moment she plunges an ice pick into a man’s neck on Fire Island, Dorothy Daniels show us what happens when a woman finally embraces her superiority.

A satire of early foodieism, a critique of how gender is defined, and a showcase of virtuoso storytelling, Chelsea G. Summers’ A Certain Hunger introduces us to the food world’s most charming psychopath and an exciting new voice in fiction.

I’ll Have What She’s Having: How Nora Ephron’s Three Iconic Films Saved the Romantic Comedy, by Erin Carlson

GoodReads Rating: 3.66

In I’ll Have What She’s Having entertainment journalist Erin Carlson tells the story of the real Nora Ephron. The queen of 90’s love stories reinvented the romcom through her trio of instant classics. With a cast of Tom Hanks, Meg Ryan, and Billy Crystal, Carlson takes readers to NYC, where reality took a backseat to romance. Ephron ruled the set with an attention to detail that made her actors feel safe but sometimes exasperated crew members.

Carlson examines how Ephron explored in the cinema answers to the questions that plagued her own romantic life. She regained faith in love after one broken engagement and two failed marriages. Carlson also explores countless other questions Ephron’s fans have wondered about. What sparked Reiner to snap out of his bachelor blues during the making of When Harry Met Sally? Why was Ryan, a gifted comedian trapped in the body of a fairytale princess, not the first choice? After she and Hanks each separately balked at playing Mail’s Kathleen Kelly and Sleepless’ Sam Baldwin, what changed their minds? And perhaps most importantly: What was Dave Chappelle doing … in a turtleneck? I’ll Have What She’s Having is a vivid account of the days and nights when Ephron learned to show her heart on the screen.

Cleopatra & Frankenstein, by Coco Mellors

GoodReads Rating: 3.77

24-year-old British painter Cleo escaped England for New York and is still finding her place in the sleepless city. A few months before her student visa ends, she meets Frank. Twenty years older and a self-made success, Frank’s life is full of all the excesses Cleo’s lacks. He offers her the chance to be happy and the freedom to paint. The main opportunity is a co-signed Green Card application. Their impulsive marriage irreversibly changes both their lives, and the lives of those close to them, in unpredicted ways.

Each compulsively readable chapter explores the lives of Cleo, Frank, and close friends and family as they grow older. Cleo’s best friend struggles to embrace his gender queerness in the wake of Cleo’s marriage. Frank’s financially dependent sister arranges sugar daddy dates to support herself after being cut off. Cleo and Frank themselves discover the trials of marriage and mental illness. Each character is as absorbing, and painfully relatable, as the last.

Heartbreaking, entertaining, and deeply moving, Cleopatra and Frankenstein marks the entry of a brilliant and bold new talent.

If you prefer the traditional love story, click the link below for the current best sellers in romance: