It is easy to be judgmental of 15-year-old girls, to act as if they—and by extension, the things they care about—are vapid and unserious. When I talk about my fifteen-year-old self, it is with a healthy dose of disdain for her chronic need to be perceived as interesting, pretty, and loved. Reading Girl’s Girl, Sonia Feldman’s debut novel, filled me with a softness for my fifteen-year-old-self and the rituals she deemed important.
Girl’s Girl documents one summer in a lyrically depicted Ohio suburb. The adult narrator, Mina, reflects on the summer before her sophomore year of high school with her two best friends, who are introduced in the first paragraph as “Margaret, whom I had known my whole life, and Eleanor, with whom I was in love.” A first kiss between Mina and Eleanor redraws the lines of their trio, destabilizing the delicate balance of friendships. The story displays the complexity of girlhood, the various ways we can love those close to us, and the fierceness, depth, and delicacy of teen friendships.
While there is much to admire about how Feldman honors and meticulously renders the experiences of coming of age and young queer love, I was especially taken with the novel’s reverent depictions of girlhood rituals. These rituals–gossip about boys and sex, getting ready to go out with nowhere to go, posing for “candid” photographs, playing the Sims on an overheating laptop–are drawn with such tender care and painstaking detail, demonstrating their important role in the central friendships. In lesser hands, these rituals would be incidental to the plot. But this book understands what it means to be a teenage girl, so it pays particular attention to what matters to these girls. To them, these rituals are the plot. It is how they build their friendship and build the narrative of their summer.
Early on in the book, the friends get ready together to go out for pizza. They pick out their outfits and do elaborate makeup that includes face rhinestones and a thoroughly described breast-contouring process. Each part of the process is meticulously described, like this passage of Mina’s hair routine: “I ran a brush across my scalp for the sensation of the bristle’s rake. My hair’s natural wave expanded with static…I passed the wand slowly down the length of a section and observed the strands’ silken realignment. I didn’t wish I had straight hair, because then I would’ve missed out on the pleasure of straightening it.”
The final looks may be more appropriate for a party than a pizza parlor, but their destination doesn’t matter. Getting ready together serves a purpose in and of itself. The detail given to the process on the page shows just how important it is to the story of their friendship and the story of that night. As Mina puts it, “we didn’t actually need to know where we were going or what we were doing that night in order to get dressed. It was summer. It was Friday. We would ready ourselves into a state of hotness sufficient for whatever the universe might be so good as to offer us.”
Those plans do not emerge, but Mina concedes, “at least we could take pictures of ourselves.” These photos serve two purposes. First, they provide “proof of the three of us at every minute.” Second, the photos serve as proof later when posted online, creating a “sufficient accumulation of information to declare that a group of girls had been together without any of them having to say so.” Through taking and posting photos, they write the story of their summer and of themselves. It is an exertion of control over how they are perceived.
While reading, I fought against the knee-jerk reaction to roll my eyes at these girls for their self-absorption, the same way I roll my eyes at the photos I took like this in high school. I resisted this judgment thanks to the clarity with which Feldman renders these rituals to reveal their deeper purpose: visibility and connection. These rituals matter to the reader because they matter to Mina, Margaret, and Eleanor. And I’m reminded they mattered to me back then, too.
The in-depth descriptions of these processes and their purposes in Mina’s story of that summer make us feel the devastation when the friendship’s equilibrium is disrupted. While Mina is grounded for the end of June and the beginning of July, Eleanor and Margaret’s summer goes on. Mina finds herself on the outside of their friend group, watching the story of the summer unfold without her on Instagram. We have seen what the rituals mean for Mina, so their absence is significant. Because of this, her fervent desire to regain control over the story of her summer feels high-stakes.
By centering teenage girls, what matters to them, and how they exert control over their own lives, Feldman honors the experiences and rituals of girlhood as what they are: not unserious or vapid, but rather foundational to our relationships with others and to our understanding of ourselves through the tumult of coming of age.
FICTION
By Sonia Feldman
The Dial Press
Published June 02, 2026
