Review: "Girl's Girl" by Sonia Feldman

Girl's Girl by Sonia Feldman
Published June 2026 via The Dial Press
★★★★

Mina's friendship with Margaret and Eleanor is at the center of her world—until she starts to wonder whether she and Eleanor might become something more, and whether or not the friendship can survive it.

Margaret made my world large. Eleanor made it into a room only the two of us could enter. It was a room in which Eleanor kept her hand on the doorknob. (loc. 2109*)

Give me all the platonic friendship books, honestly—and yes, despite the fact that the major conflict of the book is a will-they-won't-they romantic relationship, this is fundamentally a platonic friendship book. Mina is as close as close can be with her friends, but it's not a friendship without its pitfalls and perils: For Mina, being fifteen means constantly weighing up how who will react to what; actions and consequences; being interesting enough but not too interesting, and willing enough but not a pushover; being fifteen means knowing who she is in her group but also starting to understand that that things can't stay the same forever...and that she doesn't want them to.

This is not a kind of friendship I ever had—intense ones, yes, but not this kind of simultaneous certainty and uncertainty, not this kind of constant calculation and evaluation and reevaluation. But other things: It genuinely hadn't occurred to me that teenage girls playing the Sims together (something I did back in the 90s!) was something that persists, albeit now with the Sims 4 instead of the OG Sims. I think that in particular really hit the nail on the head for me in terms of the way these girls are just on the cusp of something—growing up but not quite ready to let everything go.

The book is told over the course of a summer, though Mina is looking back from the relative wisdom of adulthood. That's one of few things that gave me some pause as I read; I think I would have preferred the perspective to stay a little closer to Mina at fifteen. Then again...maybe not. It would make for Mina being unusually perceptive. Maybe I just didn't necessarily want the last bit where we speed up to the present, whenever that happens to be, and get the barest taste of where things have gone since this one summer.

A high four stars. One for overthinkers who like a good coming-of-age friendship (and then some) story. I think I'll be (over)thinking this on and off for a while.

*Quotes are from an ARC and may not be final.

Thanks to the author and publisher for inviting me to read a review copy through NetGalley.