Girls They Write Songs About by Carlene Bauer

“Don't ever leave me, she said, and I linked my arm in hers - just like Anne and Diana did as they walked along the Lake of Shining Waters.....just as girls across centuries have done, as they walk streets and sketch dreams…”

My review will never adequately describe all the adoration I have for this book. 

Girls They Write Songs About is a story for women about women. It is one of the most authentic portrayals of female friendship I've ever encountered; friendship at its best, at its worst, at its most dependent, at its most jealous, at its most loving. It tackles big topics, like whether to become a mother, and what can happen when envy taints a friendship.

The book opens as Rose and Charlotte move to NYC in 1997 as 20-somethings and meet while working at a music magazine. Their friendship blossoms out of the need for companionship, and from there we follow them over decades through their careers, their relationships, their disagreements and their sacrifices. We bear witness to all their choices and how they compare themselves to one another based on those choices.

Bauer does an incredible job at making NYC a living, breathing character here - she flushes out the way one can love and hate the city often in the same moment, and her descriptions of spots from Flatbush to Park Slope, to Bemelman's Bar to the East Village - it's all done to perfection.

This book had everything I look for when I read: thoughtfully crafted characters, a believable progression of plot, a setting that I adore. But the style of the writing and the voice was also pitch perfect, not to mention that literary references abound.

I do not think there is a woman out there who won't find a way to relate to this book. I LOVED EVERY MINUTE OF THIS NOVEL.  Thank you FSG Books for my copy!