GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS
A vibrant queer Jewish debut “teeming with heart, angst, love, and self discovery” (Emily Austin) about a young woman who, caught between the expectations of others and her own evolving desires, is forced to make a series of fraught life-altering decisions.
It’s the summer of ’96 and best friends (and secret girlfriends) Hannah and Sam are driving across the country from Long Beach, New York, to the fabled queer paradise of San Francisco, free from the harsh gazes of their neighbors and the stifling demands of Hannah’s devout Orthodox Jewish mother. In San Francisco, they will finally be together as a real couple, out in the open, around other queer people. Even if the move means leaving behind Hannah’s beloved Bubbe.
When the financial strains of West Coast living push the girls to start stripping at The Chez Paree—yet another secret Hannah must keep from her family—Hannah feels trapped. Sam wants her at the club, but Hannah hates stripping nearly as much as she hates disappointing Sam. Then Hannah meets Chris, an older butch lesbian, who is immediately taken with her. Desperate to stay in San Francisco, but away from the leering men at the club, Hannah proposes an escort arrangement.
But as Hannah falls deeper into Chris’ world and Sam starts to meet new queer friends, a rift forms between them. Without Sam, who is Hannah? And what becomes of San Francisco to Hannah alone—a space rich with queer possibility, or an intimidating, unfamiliar place, just as lonely as the one she’d left behind? An achingly tender and resonant story of survival, first love, and growing up queer in the ’90s, Girls Girls Girls is a piercing exploration of the choices we make in the thrilling and often confounding search for ourselves and home.
PRAISE FOR GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS
One of Debutiful‘s Most Anticipated Debut Books of 2025
One of LGBTQ Reads‘s Most Anticipated LGBTQ+ Books of 2025
“Girls Girls Girls floored me—the nostalgic angst and agony of it, the heat and beauty and tenderness. Shoshana von Blankensee puts it all on the page so viscerally: lust, hunger, death, sex, grief, love and every other thing a human body is and does. It’s completely extraordinary.” —Catherine Newman, New York Times bestselling author of Sandwich and We All Want Impossible Things
“Girls Girls Girls is a gorgeous, tender, and hopeful coming-of-age novel. von Blanckensee writes with wisdom and insight about self-discovery, first loves, queer community in 90s San Francisco, what it means to carve out a life for yourself, and ultimately, what and who makes a home. It’s a road trip novel in the literal and metaphorical sense, a love letter to queerness, youth, and the courage it takes to leave so that one day you may return. Girls Girls Girls is a triumph, a big beating heart of a book, full of hard-fought victories. I loved every second of it.” —Marisa Crane, author of A Sharp Endless Need
“Finally, a novel about being queer, Jewish, and obsessed with your grandmother. Shoshana von Blanckensee’s Girls Girls Girls is a tender and electric coming-of-age story. Come for the shenanigans, stay for the textured portrait of grief, desire, and the making and remaking of what it means to be family.” —Ruth Madievsky, author of All-Night Pharmacy
“Shoshana von Blanckensee has crafted a stunning debut full of heartache and hope. I loved this book.” —Michelle Tea, author of Knocking Myself Up
“Shoshana von Blanckensee’s first novel is luminous, insightful, tender, and hot.” —Andrea Lawlor, recipient of the 2020 Whiting Award for Fiction
“Girls Girls Girls is the rare many-layered coming-of-age novel that addresses lust, confusion, longing, and grief in equal measure. I wanted to live inside Shoshana von Blanckensee’s vivid evocation of 1990s San Francisco queer community long after I finished reading—and I can’t remember the last time I had such a big crush on a fictional character.” —Amy Shearn, award-winning author of The Mermaid of Brooklyn and Animal Instinct
“An immersive and emotional debut teeming with heart, angst, love, and self-discovery.” —Emily Austin, author of Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead and We Could Be Rats
Shoshana von Blanckensee’s debut is a moving coming-of-age romp about friends, families, and forgiveness, the endless ways they overlap, and all of their many wonderful, difficult, beautiful complications.” —Laurie Frankel, New York Times bestselling author of One Two Three
“A propulsive and compulsively readable debut! Girls Girls Girls is jam-packed with queer angst and queer joy, filled with a memorable cast of characters and a truly incredible amount of heart. I devoured this novel.”
—Kristen Arnett, New York Times bestselling author of Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One
