6 YA Books About Thorny Female Friendships

Squad, by Mariah MacCarthy
“Ever had a friend that you wanted to crawl inside? Just to hear the noise in their head, feel the movement of their body, the shape of their skin?” Jenna and Raejean are best friends, both defined by their love of cheerleading, linked by shared sexual fantasies about cute exchange students but even moreso by the sensation of being one mind in two bodies—“Raejenna,” the one-time object of their affection dubs them, but he’ll never actually get the feeling behind his own joke. Then all of a sudden things shift at the start of junior year, as Raejean begins pulling away from Jenna, systematically snapping all of their previously unbreakable ties. As Raejean’s ghosting takes its toll, pushing Jenna into a vicious response that takes away her identity as a cheerleader, Jenna must relearn how to inhabit solely her own body.

How It Ends, by Catherine Lo
Like something out of a romantic comedy, Jess and Annie are immediately drawn to one another on the first day of tenth grade: new girl Annie zeroes in on “beautifully uncool” Jess, who is flabbergasted that the cool new transfer from the city wants to hang out with her. What makes Jess so “painfully real” to Annie is the anxiety and trauma she still carries from brutal junior-school bullying. But now she has Annie… until the end of sophomore year, when she doesn’t. Told in alternating viewpoints, Lo’s novel tracks how the two girls go from bonding over book quotes to breaking up their intense friendship because of well-intentioned mistakes. Their short-lived friendship embodies adolescence’s big moments—the good, the bad, and the fallout.

In an Absent Dream, by Seanan McGuire
When six-year-old Katherine Lundy stumbles through a magical door into the Goblin Market, it’s another child named Moon who helps her understand the exacting logic of this world based on supposedly fair exchanges and three central rules: Ask for nothing. Names have power. Always give fair value. But as Lundy passes back and forth between her own world and the Goblin Market over the years, unable to commit to a lifetime in either, her best friend and fellow adventurer suffers for her absence. Moon is a prime example of what happens when you don’t pay your debts to the Market: her outstanding tally manifests as feathers and talons, transforming her halfway into an owl on Lundy’s next return. Lundy’s attempts to even the balance between them backfires spectacularly—as there is a vast difference between owing debts together and owing one another—and provides Lundy with her first sobering grown-up lesson about how friendship and debt rarely work.

Gossip Girl, by Cecily von Ziegesar
Blair Waldorf and Serena van der Woodsen break up, reconcile, scheme, steal each other’s boyfriends, sabotage college aspirations, and make up again so many times that it’s a wonder they get anything else done in their respective high school careers. When they’re competing over the same high-society status symbol or shred of male attention, they’re at their worst; but when they’re out of the public eye and not giving Gossip Girl endless fodder, Serena and Blair are able to recognize the ways in which they bring the best out of one another. While they’re better apart than together, their tumultuous relationship undeniably forces each to grow and change beyond her constrained high-school persona.

We Used to Be Friends, by Amy Spalding
At the start of Spalding’s forthcoming contemporary YA novel, James muses on how none of her heartbreaks from past crushes or boyfriends could match the void left by her best friend, Kat: “There are breakup tunes and lovesick ballads and celebrating-that-he-was-gone anthems. It was easy to believe that romance was the only heartache out there.” It’s fitting, then, that the novel borrows the narrative structure from the musical The Last Five Years: told in alternating chapters moving forward and backward in time, the book details how James is approaching graduation mourning their friendship, while Kat begins senior year feeling like there is nothing but opportunity ahead for them.

The Museum of Heartbreak, by Meg Leder
Seventeen-year-old Penelope is such a romantic that, despite having never been kissed, she has her very own Museum of Heartbreak: a collection of objects representing life’s many little and large disappointments and losses. Not every item is romantic, either; as Pen curates her personal exhibition, she remarks that “heartbreak is defined by absence; that is, something you love (e.g., a person, place, or thing; your favorite stuffed animal; a firefly-filled summer vacation; the restaurant with the amazing pancakes and fruit butter) is gone.” One of her many losses, marked by a copy of Anne of Green Gables, is her best friend Audrey: where once the two were fiercely united over their love of that very book, Audrey begins subtly pulling away—and, worse, she’s focusing her attention on popular Cherisse, who behind that dazzling smile has always had it out for Pen. There comes a point that not even nostalgia for a beloved book is enough to keep a relationship from running its course; but Penelope’s Museum helps her look beyond heartbreak, to hope.