6 Stories With Fierce Female Friendships That Will Make You Want to Call Your Best Pals

July 27 2020
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I am so thankful to all of the female friends that have graced my life. I don’t know where I would be without the strong women who stand beside me at my best and when I’m at my worst. These six books remind me that our friendships aren’t perfect, but they are real. I love my friends and I love these reads.  

We Are All Good People Here
by Susan Rebecca White

WE ARE ALL GOOD PEOPLE HERE is a multigenerational story of friendship between two very different women.  In 1962, despite their dissimilar upbringings, college roommates Daniella and Eve quickly form a bond. However, the girls realize the systemic injustice in their worlds forces them to question everything. Eve leans into a radical group that Daniella doesn’t understand. When tragedy strikes, Eve returns to Daniella with the hope of burying her past and moving forward. Then years later, their secrets begin to threaten their daughters’ lives.

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We Are All Good People Here
Susan Rebecca White

From the author of A Place at the Table and A Soft Place to Land, an “intense, complex, and wholly immersive” (Joshilyn Jackson, New York Times bestselling author) multigenerational novel that explores the complex relationship between two very different women and the secrets they bequeath to their daughters.

Eve Whalen, privileged child of an old-money Atlanta family, meets Daniella Gold in the fall of 1962, on their first day at Belmont College. Paired as roommates, the two become fast friends. Daniella, raised in Georgetown by a Jewish father and a Methodist mother, has always felt caught between two worlds. But at Belmont, her bond with Eve allows her to finally experience a sense of belonging. That is, until the girls’ expanding awareness of the South’s systematic injustice forces them to question everything they thought they knew about the world and their places in it.

Eve veers toward radicalism—a choice pragmatic Daniella cannot fathom. After a tragedy, Eve returns to Daniella for help in beginning anew, hoping to shed her past. But the past isn’t so easily buried, as Daniella and Eve discover when their daughters are endangered by secrets meant to stay hidden.

Spanning more than thirty years of American history, from the twilight of Kennedy’s Camelot to the beginning of Bill Clinton’s presidency, We Are All Good People Here is “a captivating…meaningful, resonant story” (Emily Giffin, author of All We Ever Wanted) about two flawed but well-meaning women clinging to a lifelong friendship that is tested by the rushing waters of history and their own good intentions.

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Big Summer
by Jennifer Weiner

Friendships, especially female friendships, can be full of love but also difficult hardships. And so is BIG SUMMER. After an explosive fight that destroyed their friendship, Daphne hasn’t spoken a word to Drue in six years. So when Drue shows up unexpectedly and asks Daphne to be her maid of honor, she’s shocked. Despite not being the same shy sidekick that she was to Drue’s perfect glamour in high school, she agrees. Letting Drue back into her new life as a plus-size Instagram influencer could be risky, but BIG SUMMER tackles the difficult nature of friendship and captures what really matters most.  

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Big Summer
Jennifer Weiner

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

“Sexy and satisfying, Big Summer is the perfect quarantine read.” —USA TODAY

“The beach read to end all beach reads.” —Entertainment Weekly

“Big fun, and then some. It’s empowering and surprising—a reminder to put down the phone and enjoy each moment for what it is.” —The Washington Post

A deliciously funny, remarkably poignant, and simply unputdownable novel about the power of friendship, the lure of frenemies, and the importance of making peace with yourself through all life’s ups and down. From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Good in Bed and Best Friends Forever, Big Summer is the perfect escape with one of the most lovable heroines to come to the page in years.

Six years after the fight that ended their friendship, Daphne Berg is shocked when Drue Cavanaugh walks back into her life, looking as lovely and successful as ever, with a massive favor to ask. Daphne hasn’t spoken one word to Drue in all this time—she doesn’t even hate-follow her ex-best friend on social media—so when Drue asks if she will be her maid-of-honor at the society wedding of the summer, Daphne is rightfully speechless.

Drue was always the one who had everything—except the ability to hold onto friends. Meanwhile, Daphne’s no longer the same self-effacing sidekick she was back in high school. She’s built a life that she loves, including a growing career as a plus-size Instagram influencer. Letting glamorous, seductive Drue back into her life is risky, but it comes with an invitation to spend a weekend in a waterfront Cape Cod mansion. When Drue begs and pleads and dangles the prospect of cute single guys, Daphne finds herself powerless as ever to resist her friend’s siren song.

A sparkling novel about the complexities of female relationships, the pitfalls of living out loud and online, and the resilience of the human heart, Big Summer is a witty, moving story about family, friendship, and figuring out what matters most.

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Anne of Green Gables
by Lucy Maud Montgomery

If you want a book that truly embodies the power of female friendships, then you absolutely must read ANNE OF GREEN GABLES. Anne Shirley, is a fiery young girl who finds a home for herself in the farmhouse in Green Gables, but she also finds a true friend in Diana Barry. Together, the girls are kindred spirits who grow together and learn to live and love better because they have each other. If there is such a thing as friend soul mates (and I believe there is) then that’s what Anne and Diana are. We would each be so lucky to have a “bosom friend” like them.  

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Anne of Green Gables
Lucy Maud Montgomery

One of the most charming and enduring coming-of-age tales!

Best-selling Canadian author Lucy Maud Montgomery published the first book in her charming series in 1908, making it a literary favorite for more than a hundred years. Published as a children's novel, the story of Anne Shirley, an orphan, was inspired by the author's childhood adventures on rural Prince Edward Island. It follows Anne's journey as she moves to a farm on Prince Edward Island to live with a middle-aged brother and sister who had intended to adopt a boy to help them with farming chores. The story follows Anne as she makes a home and comes of age on the island.

 

* This chic and inexpensive edition comes with a heat-burnished cover, foil stamping, luxurious endpapers, and a smaller trim size that's easy to hold.
* The widely popular novel has sold more than 50 million copies and has been translated into more than twenty languages since its first publication.

 

Anne of Green Gables has been one of the world's most charming coming-of-age stories for more than a century.

 

About the Word Cloud Classics series:

Classic works of literature with a clean, modern aesthetic! Perfect for both old and new literature fans, the Word Cloud Classics series from Canterbury Classics provides a chic and inexpensive introduction to timeless tales. With a higher production value, including heat burnished covers and foil stamping, these eye-catching, easy-to-hold editions are the perfect gift for students and fans of literature everywhere.

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How Could She
by Lauren Mechling

Funny and full of complicated female friendships, How Could She is compelling and unexpected. Together, three friends navigate husbands, careers, divorce, and of course their relationships with each other. After a breakup, Geraldine is tired of watching her perfect friends from the sidelines. She decides to join them and start a new life in New York City. Of course, Rachel’s and Sunny’s lives are not nearly as charmed as they appeared from a distance. As Geraldine struggles to adjust, she questions how she could be less confident than she was in her twenties, and also, why are Sunny and Rachel suddenly hanging out without her? Lauren Mechling explores our need for essential female friendships while navigating the terrifying world of media in New York.  

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How Could She
Lauren Mechling

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The Sisters of Summit Avenue
by Lynn Cullen

Sometimes, your best friend is your sister, and sometimes, that friendship can be even more tumultuous when you’re actually related. In 1934, two estranged sisters reluctantly reconnect at their mother’s behest. Ruth is raising four kids on her own, since her husband was infested with sleeping sickness, and she has always coveted June’s perfect life. But June’s ideal facade hides her own sorrows. Despite being married to a doctor and having her dream career, she has no children and the man she really loves belongs to Ruth. The sisters’ bitterness brings about a confrontation that’s been brewing for years. THE SISTERS OF SUMMIT AVENUE is a story of redemption and strength, and the reality that, for better or for worse, they belong together.  

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The Sisters of Summit Avenue
Lynn Cullen

From the bestselling author of Mrs. Poe and Twain’s End comes a “poignant, beautifully rendered story of two sisters who find the courage to reclaim their bond after years of misunderstandings and heartbreak” (Melanie Benjamin, New York Times bestselling author) during the Great Depression.

1934. Ruth has been single-handedly raising four young daughters and running her family’s Indiana farm for eight long years, ever since her husband, John, was infected by the infamous “sleeping sickness” devastating families across the country. If only she could trade places with her older sister, June: blonde and beautiful, married to a wealthy doctor, living in a mansion in St. Paul. And June has a coveted job, too, as one of “the Bettys,” the perky recipe developers who populate the famous Betty Crocker test kitchen. But these gilded trappings hide sorrows: she has borne no children. And the man she loves more than anything belongs to Ruth.

When the two sisters reluctantly reunite after a long estrangement, June’s bitterness about her sister’s betrayal sets into motion a confrontation that’s been years in the making. And their mother, Dorothy, who’s brought the two of them together, has her own dark secrets, which might blow up the fragile peace she hopes to restore between her daughters.

An emotional journey of redemption, inner strength, and the ties that bind families together, for better or worse, The Sisters of Summit Avenue is a moving and heartfelt tribute to mothers, daughters, and sisters everywhere.

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In Five Years
by Rebecca Serle

IN FIVE YEARS made me laugh and cry and contemplate my own life plans, but it also made me immediately call my best friend and tell her she had to read this book. When I first picked up IN FIVE YEARS, I thought it was going to be a love story, and trust me, it is, but not the one I expected. Dannie and Bella couldn’t be more different, but together they are both unstoppable forces in the face of destiny. Dannie is a type-A lawyer who thinks she has everything figured out. She’s got the job, the picture-perfect fiancé, and the dream apartment. But on the night of her engagement she has a vision of waking up five years in the future, in an apartment she’s never seen with a man she’s never met. When she finds herself back to normal againDannie passes it all off as just a dream—that is, until she meets the same man, five years later, on the arm of her best friend. 

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In Five Years
Rebecca Serle

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

A Good Morning America, FabFitFun, and Marie Claire Book Club Pick

In Five Years is as clever as it is moving, the rare read-in-one-sitting novel you won’t forget.” —Chloe Benjamin, New York Times bestselling author of The Immortalists

Perfect for fans of Me Before You and One Day—a striking, powerful, and moving love story following an ambitious lawyer who experiences an astonishing vision that could change her life forever.

Where do you see yourself in five years?

Dannie Kohan lives her life by the numbers.

She is nothing like her lifelong best friend—the wild, whimsical, believes-in-fate Bella. Her meticulous planning seems to have paid off after she nails the most important job interview of her career and accepts her boyfriend’s marriage proposal in one fell swoop, falling asleep completely content.

But when she awakens, she’s suddenly in a different apartment, with a different ring on her finger, and beside a very different man. Dannie spends one hour exactly five years in the future before she wakes again in her own home on the brink of midnight—but it is one hour she cannot shake. In Five Years is an unforgettable love story, but it is not the one you’re expecting.

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