Celebrate Galentine’s Day with these friendship stories for adults! These books about friendship include fiction and nonfiction- perfect for any book club!
Looking for a friendship story for your next book club selection?
What could be a more perfect excuse than a fictional Galentine’s Day holiday that will give you an excuse to brunch AND discuss a great book about friendship.
What is Galentine’s Day?
I think of Galentine’s Day as an official holiday, but its origin story might surprise you. This catchy holiday wasn’t created by Hallmark.
Instead, Galentine’s Day was created by the fictional Leslie Knope in an episode of Parks and Recreation.
Aptly titled the same name as the holiday (Season 2, Episode 16), Leslie gathers a group of her closest gal pals for brunch full of waffles and love.
In this memorable scene, Amy Poehler delivers these lines, “Every February 13th, my lady friends and I leave our husbands and our boyfriends at home, and we just come and kick it, breakfast style,” she explains in the episode. “Ladies celebrating ladies.”
When is Galentine’s Day?
On February 13th, the day before Valentine’s Day, you can devote a day to celebrating your friendship with your best gal pals.
We encourage our readers to embrace a book club selection together and have gathered 9 friendship stories you’ll love to celebrate.
That’s not all though, if you are looking for great movie or tv recommendations, we have you covered with today’s podcast with Mary Carver.
Mary is a regular contributor on MomAdvice and the host of The Couch With Mary Carver. Her podcast celebrates TV, movies, music, and books all year-long.
Head here to read these show notes and get a list of fun ideas to celebrate this holiday with your favorite gal pals.
Listen to this episode in the embedded player or subscribe to the Book Gang wherever you get your podcasts.
Let’s celebrate this fictional holiday with the best books about friendship in fiction and nonfiction!
17 Stunning Friendship Stories to Read Now
These seventeen books celebrate female friendship stories are PERFECT for your next book club gathering.
The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot by Marianne Cronin
An unlikely friendship blossoms between a seventeen-year-old girl named Lenni and an eighty-three-year-old woman named Margot.
Their age difference may seem unusual, but Lenni has found it challenging to make friends her age in the Glasgow Princess Royal Hospital.
The two decide to take advantage of the arts and crafts room and begin a unique project when they discover their combined age is one hundred years.
They will create one hundred paintings that tell the story of their lives and find joy and comfort in sharing the stories they have never spoken aloud.
Be sure to keep some tissues handy because Margot's story, in particular, is so beautiful as she reveals these deeply hidden truths that will have you weeping.
However, Lenni's storyline shines as she comically questions faith and strikes another unlikely friendship with the hospital's patient chaplain.
Related- 2022 Book Club Books
Last Summer on State Street by Toya Wolfe
Last Summer on State Street is a haunting coming-of-age story recommended for Jacqueline Woodson and Brit Bennett fans and one of the most moving stories of friendship that I have read.
This powerful and emotional journey is told poetically through the eyes of Felicia "Fe Fe" Stevens, a young girl living in Chicago's Robert Taylor Homes during the summer of 1998.
Alongside her friends Precious and Stacia, Fe Fe experiences the joys and struggles of growing up in a community on the brink of destruction.
But everything changes when a mysterious new friend, Tonya, enters their lives.
Set in the housing projects of Chicago, this tells the story of four girls living there as each family faces unique challenges, as they jump rope through the constantly changing shifts of their neighborhood.
Toya Wolfe writes like a seasoned writer, not a debut novelist, and uses her life story to shape these pages.
If you need an audiobook, Shayna Small's magnificent narration enhanced the experience so much that I held my breath as she delivered these poetic lines.
We All Want Impossible Things by Catherine Newman
This short and compelling novel celebrates the beauty of female friendship.
Follow the heartwarming story of Edith and Ashley, best friends for over 42 years, as they navigate the challenges of life and love.
When Edi is diagnosed with ovarian cancer and begins living in a hospice, Ash is there by her side, struggling to be the best friend, wife, and parent she can be.
With a rotating cast of hospice characters and "Fiddler on the Roof" as their soundtrack, the two friends spend their last days together reminiscing with hilarity over all their years of friendship.
Through their reminiscing and playful antics, they find ways to keep Edi’s pain at bay and make the most of their last moments together.
The heartwarming scenes are described in vivid detail, bringing the reader into the heart of their friendship in this hospice setting.
Related- The Best Books of 2022
The People We Keep by Allison Larkin
At 16, April escapes her lonely life in a dilapidated motorhome, fueled by her love for music.
Traveling the East Coast over three years, she forms many connections but struggles to trust the people in her life.
The beauty in this story is her beautiful discovery of her profound impact on people around her and the importance of embracing those who love her so well.
This beautiful friendship story offers a beautiful intergenerational friendship showcasing how a chosen family can be as meaningful as our blood.
On Book Gang, you can listen to my Allison Larkin interview where we discuss the inspiration for this story and the surprising ways April's story and her story intertwine.
You Can Trust Me by Wendy Heard
Summer and Leo are best friends who make a living as con artists.
When Leo decides to con a billionaire on her own and goes missing, Summer has to find out what happened by infiltrating the billionaire's exclusive island.
The story, told from alternating perspectives, also builds smart backstories and motives for both Summer and Leo as the two try to find one another again. Through flashback sequences readers can develop a connection to these women's stories.
If you love friendship stories where they will go to the end of the earth for one another, you will find that in this thriller.
Be sure to tune into my Wendy Heard interview as we discuss the best con artist queens in literature.
Hey Ladies! by Michelle Markowitz and Caroline Moss ( The Story of 8 Best Friends, 1 Year, and Way, Way Too Many Emails)
This book selection is less a CELEBRATION of friendship but acknowledges the REAL challenges of female friendships in a laugh-out-loud format.
In this ALL TOO RELATABLE plotline, this story follows a group of eight 20-and-30-something friends as they navigate through one year of holidays, summer house rentals, dates, brunches, breakups, and the planning of a VERY disastrous wedding.
The novel is told entirely through emails, texts, DMs, and every other form of communication known to man, making it an instant classic for anyone who loves to read about the ups and downs of friendships.
The email sign-offs and correspondences were so funny that I started sending screenshots to my husband.
This satirical punch of a book will have you cringing and laughing as you recognize your friends and even yourself in these scenarios.
If you are a Kindle reader, it is best served up through the Kindle app on your iPad because of the fun illustrations included within this book.
Related- The Best Books About Weddings
Something Like Happy by Eva Woods
This novel follows Annie Hebden, a 35-year-old woman stuck in a rut and struggling to move on from a tragic loss.
That is until she meets Polly Leonard, an eccentric and bubbly woman determined to help Annie find joy and happiness.
Polly, who has been diagnosed with a brain tumor, will not take no for an answer to her repeated aims at friendship, and this diagnosis makes Polly more determined to make the most of every day.
Polly has been told she has one hundred days left and decides she wants to pursue one hundred new ways to be happy... and she wants Annie to help her with this mission.
However, Polly doesn’t know that Annie needs this happiness to push as much as she does.
HISTORICAL FICTION FRIENDSHIP STORIES
These friendship stories are the perfect book club books for historical fiction readers.
The Sunshine Girls by Molly Fader
This frothy historical fiction novel follows three friends in nursing school during the Vietnam War as their careers unexpectedly intersect with a Hollywood set.
In the modern timeline, readers are invited to the funeral of one of these nurses as tensions arise between her daughters as they settle the estate.
The story takes a surprising turn when Kitty Deveraux, a renowned Hollywood actress, unexpectedly shows up at the funeral to tell them all about their mother's secret Hollywood life.
You can listen to my Molly Fader interview on Book Gang as we discuss our favorite Old Hollywood moments for our 2023 Summer Reading Guide author series.
Related- The Best Books About Old Hollywood
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See
Lisa See is masterful at complex and moving stories of friendship and sisterhood, so I would be remiss if I didn’t include one of the best books from her backlist.
In Hunan (a remote county in China) in the 19th century, a young girl named Lily forms a powerful and lifelong bond with her "old same," Snow Flower.
As is customary in their tradition, Snow Flower & Lily are paired together to be lifelong friends and to see each other through their marriages, children, and the ending of their lives.
They write back and forth in a unique secret language called nu shu on a fan to communicate with each other.
This keeps their stories away from the prying eyes of men, releasing their true feelings about their new roles.
It is a friendship that endures through a war, through many pregnancies and miscarriages, through difficult marriages, but can it survive until the end of their lives?
The Kitchen Front by Jennifer Ryan
If you need an uplifting story about female friendships, The Kitchen Front is a beautiful historical fiction pick that will check all the boxes.
In this story, four determined women compete for the opportunity to host a popular wartime cooking program (on the BBC) called The Kitchen Front.
The prize is not just a job as the program's first-ever female co-host but also a chance to better their lives.
This contest is meant to educate the public on how to cook their rations, but it means so much more to the contestants.
With the stakes high, these four women are giving the competition their all and are determined to come out on top, while the contest aims to bring the community together and uplift the nation's spirit during trying times.
Of course, they find love and friendship with one another along the way, and it grows into some heartwarming ways.
The Fair Fight by Anna Freeman
Let’s celebrate female friendships and empowerment in the most unlikely places- the bare-knuckle boxing ring of 18th century England.
This page-turning novel combines the gritty atmosphere of Fight Club with a smart feminist angle that is a surefire winner for any Sarah Waters fan.
Born in a brothel, Ruth discovers her true calling as a bare-knuckle boxer.
While Ruth wasn't born with the looks necessary to get those paid patrons, she does discover a hidden talent for getting these patrons to pay her to fight the other girls in the house.
Scarred by smallpox and trapped in a life of power games, Charlotte seeks an escape. While her path could be different, her scarred face means she doesn't meet society's beauty standards.
When the two women meet, their perspectives are forever changed, and they team up to fight for their places in society.
This sweeping historical fiction novel tackles how women creatively navigate societal hurdles and can lift each other to gain momentum in a male-dominated world.
The Gown by Jennifer Robson
Instead of exploring the story of the royal family and all of its mystery, Robson decides to explore it from another viewpoint: the women who made the wedding dress.
The dual timeline story begins in London in 1947 in post-World War II Britain, a time of hardship and uncertainty.
Ann Hughes & Miriam Dassin are talented embroiderers tasked with the intricate stitching that will adorn the royal bride's priceless wedding gown.
After the royal ceremony, Ann moves and never tells her family about her life in London and her work on this famous gown.
In the modern timeline of 2016, Ann's granddaughter stumbles upon a box of her late grandmother's belongings, she finds a set of hand-stitched flowers with no background information.
What she discovers, though, is that these motifs are the same that decorated Queen Elizabeth's gown, and she begins to wonder if there was more to her grandmother's story than she realizes.
Heather travels to London to unravel the past Ann never shared with her family and her secret friendship with Miriam, a celebrated artist and Holocaust survivor.
An excerpt of the interview with Betty Foster, a woman who aided in the actual embroidery of the dress, appears at the end of the book and showcases how much her voice shaped Robson's writing and the gorgeous characters she has crafted.
NONFICTION FRIENDSHIP STORIES
These nonfiction books about friendship are wonderful options for readers who want to dive deep into culivating friendships in their life.
Share Your Stuff. I'll Go First by Laura Tremaine
Are you looking for a guide to building and strengthening your friendships? Look no further than this thoughtful tool from debut novelist Laura Tremaine.
This powerful book, part memoir and part guidebook, provides readers with the tools they need to foster authentic and meaningful connections with the women in their lives.
She shares her journey toward building authentic connections by drawing on childhood experience, shifting faith, and her marriage to a Hollywood movie director.
Each chapter reads like a short story, including reflective journal questions and prompts to help readers uncover their lives' unique details and stories and cultivate deeper connections with others.
To connect more with Laura Tremaine, check out my Book Gang interview with the author.
BACKLIST FRIENDSHIP BOOKS
If you have been with your gal pals as long as I have, I wanted to offer some great backlist friendship stories that you might want to host a “reunion” book club.
These are four modern-day classics you might have read in your earlier years of friendship that could be revived for your next gathering.
Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants by Ann Brashares
This friendship classic novel tells the story of four best friends who share a pair of magical jeans that fit each of them perfectly.
Despite being separated for the summer, the friends maintain a strong bond through letters and the jeans that bind them together.
The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
The Red Tent is loosely based on Dinah's Biblical story and is a familiar classic passed on in many book clubs.
The red tent is the gathering place where the women would commune during their cycles, to give birth, and where they went when they were ill.
This little tent is a sorority of sorts is where the women sit to share their stories and sing songs.
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
This dystopian novel contains a beautiful blossoming friendship between our main protagonist, Katniss, and her friend, Gale.
The two garner each other support as they work to survive the game and the inevitable rebellion that comes after.
Related- The Grace Year Book Club
Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells
This backlist series follows the friendship of four Louisiana women, known as the Ya-Yas, over several decades.
The story explores the ups and downs of their friendship and how they support and rely on each other throughout their lives.
What friendship stories would you add to this list?
