Review: "Long Island Girls" by Gabrielle Korn

Long Island Girls by Gabrielle Korn
Published June 2026 via St. Martin's Press
★★★★

Long Island, 2005: Susan feels awkward and out of place in her teenageness. A chance encounter with Eliza leaves her reeling—both because of her own inadequate reaction to revelations about Eliza's experiences and because Eliza awakens something in Susan that she hadn't really been aware of. It goes nowhere. And for years after, Susan wonders: Was she the one?

It's so odd to be old enough that formative periods of my childhood are now historical fiction. Long Island Girls doesn't stay in 2005—every so often it jumps forward, and Susan ages, and the historical context changes. Susan is involved in the music scene, parts of which go a bit over my head (I skipped the whole pop culture thing when I was a teenager), but her understanding of what is normal and what is okay in the music scene changes as she ages and as cultural understandings change.

Susan thinks: I'm just learning a lot about who gets to make art in this city. (loc. 930*)

A number of themes run through the book, but one of the ones with the most sticking power is Susan's nonrelationship with Eliza. Their first interaction is something fleeting, but over the years they run into each other again, and again, and each interaction rewrites what Susan knows about Eliza, and sometimes what she knows about herself.

"You're not going to want to hear this," he says, "But I don't think we ever really get over the things that end before they begin." (loc. 2647)

At times I wished Long Island Girls had stayed in the 2000s, just because it felt so strange and specific to read about my own teenaged years—I turned 17 and graduated from high school in 2005—through the lens of historical fiction. The book wouldn't be able to do a lot of the things it is doing without spanning decades, though. I'm so curious to see how this will land for people from different generations—from we millennials (nary a mention of avocado toast, I should note) who remember a time when landlines were the norm to those who have grown up with and on social media.

*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.