Plot Summary
Prologue
A guarded teenager narrates the ache of being unnameable: not the freckled, boy-chasing girl that movies and pop songs promise, but someone who looks down love's well-worn road and feels nothing. She has learned to hoard secrets, both the harmless ones and the corrosive ones, like a mother's promises to call a therapist that were never kept.
She insists the truth is simpler than feeling broken: it is not that she is unlike other girls, it is that she has never met a girl like herself. Then, she says, you finally meet her, and suddenly every lyric you dismissed snaps into focus. The confession frames everything that follows as a coming-of-age love story braided with grief.
Exiled to the Pines
Seventeen-year-old Coley1 is dropped into rural Oregon to live with Curtis,3 the deadbeat father she has not seen since she was three, after her mother13 dies by suicide. She refuses to unpack, treating permanence as surrender, and silently counts down to eighteen so she can leave.
Curtis,3 a tattooed musician who pays bills crafting silver jewelry, fumbles at fatherhood, leaving coffee, cash, and a note ordering her to go make friends. Resentful and homesick for San Diego sidewalks and sirens, Coley1 bikes through a town of pine trees and two-lane roads to a strip-mall arcade advertising air-conditioning. She hauls a tin of her mother's13 fridge-door affirmations and a sense that she only ever loses people.
The Parking Lot Collision
Trenton's4 speeding minivan nearly flattens Coley1 as she chains her bike outside the arcade. From the back climbs Sonya,2 dark-haired and effortlessly beautiful, periwinkle nails catching Coley's1 eye, and the near-death moment dissolves into something more dizzying than fear. Inside, Coley1 meets the friend group: smug driver Trenton,4 easygoing Alex,5 and sharp-tongued SJ.6
Coley1 refuses to be charmed by Trenton,4 trading insults that make Sonya2 laugh. When the group leaves for the lake, Sonya2 snaps her fingers and demands Coley1 come along. Faced with a choice between Curtis's3 empty house and this magnetic stranger, Coley1 follows, her stomach lurching in a way she does not yet have words for.
Lake Day Ends in Fury
At the lake Coley1 feels invisible until Trenton4 hauls her over his shoulder and dumps her in the water against her will. Humiliated, she storms toward her bike, and Sonya2 chases her down, defending Trenton4 as a good guy who simply does not know how to stop himself.
Their argument escalates into shouting, Sonya2 calling Coley1 a grumpy bitch, until Coley1 breaks down and Sonya2 softens, holding her with startling tenderness. The fight becomes flirtation. Sonya,2 unwilling to let Coley1 leave a stranger, grabs her arm and writes her AIM screen name and phone number in Sharpie, extracting a promise that Coley1 will call.
The Smeared Number
Coley's1 wet clothes blur the Sharpie into illegible gray, and she spends a night scribbling possible combinations, devastated. Days later Sonya2 simply shows up at Curtis's3 door, indignant that her promise went unanswered. Their reconciliation launches a summer of escalating closeness: they shoplift champagne from a 7-Eleven, where Coley1 first crosses paths with stoned clerk Blake,8 and claim the railroad tracks near the stone bridge as their private spot.
Coley1 meets Sonya's2 controlling mother Tracy11 and adoring little sister Emma.10 Late-night AIM chats turn confessional and coded, and Sonya2 begins writing haiku about Coley1 in her LiveJournal, privately admitting this new girl is not boring, not forgettable, simply unlike anyone else.
Absinthe and Warnings
The group drives into the hills for a barn party where Sonya's2 openly queer former dance rival Faith,7 home from college, serves absinthe. Trenton4 recklessly ignites the alcohol-soaked sugar, nearly torching the barn before Coley1 smothers the flames. Faith7 warns Coley1 that bullies like Trenton4 turn on everyone eventually, even girlfriends, having driven her own little brother to switch schools.
When cops arrive, the group flees through a field and hides in a gully, where Coley1 unknowingly leads them into poison oak. Earlier, sharing a cigarette outside, Sonya2 had coyly cautioned that Faith7 was trouble, hinting at rumors that Faith7 had been close to another girl, a coded fear Coley1 quietly refuses to feed.
Tangled Under the Covers
Back at Sonya's2 house, the girls must strip and treat each other with Tecnu to remove the poison oak oils, and the lotion-rubbing turns charged, hands lingering on bare backs and shoulders. Sonya2 insists Coley1 stay the night rather than bike home in the dark.
In sleep, Sonya2 curls around Coley,1 her arm draped across her stomach, her breath against Coley's1 neck, and Coley1 lies awake memorizing the weight of her. By morning the spell has curdled. Sonya2 is breezy and distant, jokes to Curtis3 over pancakes about playing capture the flag, and drives Coley1 home in near silence, leaving Coley1 to wonder what she did wrong.
Olive Juice on the Tracks
At their railroad spot, a drunk Sonya2 stands oblivious as a train barrels toward her, and Coley1 tackles her off the rails into the grass. The brush with death cracks them both open. Coley1 finally speaks the unspeakable: her mother13 killed herself, possibly an accidental overdose, and Coley1 has never forgiven herself for missing the earlier bus that might have let her find her in time.
Sonya2 wipes her tears and offers their private code, mouthing olive juice, which sounds like I love you. They finally kiss, again and again in the tall grass, fingers tangling, a moment Coley1 experiences as her whole world realigning.
The Laundry Room Betrayal
After the kiss Sonya's2 phone buzzes and she flees, going cold over AIM and posting about a girls' night that pointedly excludes Coley.1 At a kickback, a very drunk Sonya2 reveals she leaves for dance camp half the summer, news she never shared, and in the bathroom dismisses Coley1 as too much drama.
After a brief, ritualized reconciliation upstairs collapses with Sonya2 sobbing that she is not like this, Coley1 discovers her wrapped around Trenton4 on the laundry-room washer. Reeling, Coley1 kisses Alex5 outside as an experiment and feels nothing, confirming who she is. Driving her home, Alex5 unwittingly reveals the whole group knows about her mother,13 gossip that traces back to Sonya.2
Reclaiming the Jacket
Coley1 realizes she left her mother's13 beloved denim jacket, her most treasured relic, at Sonya's.2 Curtis3 drives her to retrieve it, and they begin tentatively bonding. At the house Coley1 finds a going-away party she was deliberately not invited to. Cornered in her bedroom, Sonya2 turns to glass, insisting she is touchy with all her friends, that it means nothing, that Coley1 is imagining their connection.
She refuses to apologize for spreading the news about Coley's1 mother. Coley1 names the cruelty as unforgivable and walks out. Sonya2 then departs for dance camp, where, her journals reveal, Faith7 has become an assistant counselor who sees straight through her.
Rebound and the Trailer Raid
Adrift during Sonya's2 absence, Coley1 falls in with Blake,8 the strange, stoned clerk turned aspiring body-piercer. Blake8 pierces Coley's1 ear, helps her chop off her hair, and shares her own scars, an ex who is gay and an abortion she went through. They hook up, but Coley1 keeps imagining Sonya2 and pulls away, ashamed of wearing a mask just as Sonya2 did.
The recklessness peaks when Blake8 breaks into her drug-dealer ex's trailer to steal weed, and the ex turns out to be Alex,5 who arrives swinging a bat alongside Trenton.4 Blake8 escapes with the stash but abandons Coley1 on a remote roadside, terrified and alone.
The Roadside Phone Call
Stranded and sobbing, Coley1 calls Curtis3 and asks her dad to come get her, the first time she has truly reached for him. He arrives without interrogation, hugs her, and pulls over when she breaks down confessing she hates herself, that her mother13 must have hated her too.
Curtis3 insists her mother13 loved and fought for her, revealing he read the final journal seeking to understand. He admits he was a coward who froze her at age three in his mind, but that her mother13 left him, not the reverse, and that he will always love them both. They forge a fragile truce and start a shared list of things to do together.
Found Family, Distant Longing
Coley1 lands a hostessing job at Makoto's hibachi grill, where she finds belonging in nightly family meals and meets server Kendrick and his boyfriend Tye,12 an openly loving gay couple who model the unhidden future she craves. Curtis3 gifts her a tiger's-eye choker for clarity and protection.
Meanwhile Sonya's2 camp journals chart her disintegration: she cannot focus, dreams nightly of Coley,1 and witnesses Faith7 kissing another assistant, Orion, beautiful and unafraid. Faith,7 having read Sonya's2 logged-in confessions, gently names her self-loathing closet phase. Sonya2 drafts anguished, unsent emails admitting she loves Coley1 and cannot stop, even as she insists she can never be brave enough to claim it.
The Parking Lot Goodbye
Sonya2 returns and the two collide at Emma's10 birthday dinner at Makoto's. After Coley's1 shift, Sonya2 waits in the parking lot and confesses she missed her, likes her, cannot stop thinking of her, but frames Coley1 as wrong and herself as merely making an exception.
Coley1 refuses to keep circling: she will not chase someone too scared to love her, will not shrink herself, will not wait on anyone to live her life. They part with a forehead kiss, Sonya2 whispering that one day she will be as brave as Coley.1 Separately, SJ6 finds Coley1 and explains the leaked secret was not malice but Sonya2 seeking advice, since SJ's6 own sister attempted suicide.
Blood and Strawberry Gloss
At SJ's6 party, Coley1 and Sonya2 drift to the pool and nearly kiss before a drunk, enraged Trenton4 yanks Coley1 by the hair, splitting her scalp, then grabs Sonya's2 jaw and screams at her. Something snaps. Coley1 attacks, breaking Trenton's4 nose with three blows until Alex5 pulls her off, siding firmly against Trenton.4
SJ6 is horrified to learn he hits girls; Brooke9 defends him and leaves with him. Bloodied, Coley1 walks away, having done all she can. Sonya2 runs after her barefoot and tearful, finally vowing to stop running, that she loves her. They kiss, copper and strawberry gloss mingling, and Coley1 rides home with a promise to message, the cycle finally broken.
Epilogue
The author's acknowledgments reframe the novel as the culmination of a true story: a closeted songwriter who, on a rainy Los Angeles studio day, finally admitted she was gay and wrote a song called Girls Like Girls, then spent her last few thousand dollars filming its music video.
Released to nine thousand subscribers, it climbed past millions of views, proof that countless people were starving for queer hope. She dedicates the book to anyone who ever felt unworthy of a happy ending, insisting it gets better, that they are capable, worthy, and deserving of finding all things magic. The fiction and the life close the same loop: visibility as survival.
Analysis
Girls Like Girls reframes the classic coming-out narrative as a dual rescue: Coley1 must learn to love herself before she can survive loving someone who refuses to. Set in a surveillance-heavy small town in 2006, the novel diagnoses internalized homophobia with clinical precision. Sonya2 is not a villain but a casualty of a mother who trained her into stillness and a community where queerness circulates only as whispered rumor. Her serial advance-and-retreat is the behavioral signature of shame, the agonizing gap between self-knowledge and self-permission, and the book refuses an easy verdict on her, granting readers her interior through LiveJournal entries that make her cowardice legible as terror rather than malice. Crucially, the story braids the romance with a parallel reparative arc between Coley1 and her estranged father.3 Curtis3 enacts the opposite of Sonya's2 flight, choosing to keep showing up, and his persistence dismantles Coley's1 inherited belief that she is disposable. This father plot is the secret engine of the love plot: only after Coley1 learns from him that being needed is not being hurt, and that she is worthy regardless of who stays, can she refuse to shrink herself for Sonya.2 The novel's ethical center is Coley's1 parking-lot refusal, where she chooses self-respect over a love that frames her as wrong. By making Sonya's2 eventual courage autonomous, arriving after Coley1 has already let go, the book insists that no one can be loved into self-acceptance from outside. Grief threads everything: Coley's1 survivor guilt over her mother's13 suicide makes the violation of that secret the deepest wound, and the recurring water imagery, from the lake's humiliation to her final cleansing dive, marks her movement from drowning toward rebirth. The lesson is plainly stated yet hard-won: you are worthy, and bravery is choosing to live your truth rather than turning to stone.
Review Summary
Girls Like Girls receives mixed reviews, with ratings ranging from 1 to 5 stars. Many readers appreciate the nostalgic 2006 setting and the expansion of Kiyoko's music video storyline. However, critics cite underdeveloped characters, rushed pacing, and simplistic writing. Some find the romance toxic and unrealistic. Positive aspects include the portrayal of grief, coming-of-age themes, and LGBTQ+ representation. The book resonates strongly with fans of Kiyoko's music but may disappoint those expecting a more polished narrative. Overall, it's seen as a debut with potential but room for improvement.
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Characters
Coley
Grieving, guarded narratorA seventeen-year-old transplanted from San Diego after her mother's13 suicide, Coley narrates with armor-plated sarcasm that barely contains an ocean of grief and self-blame. Half-white, half-Asian, she has always felt like never enough, and her mother's13 death cemented a belief that she is disposable, someone no one misses. She builds brick walls, trusts only herself, and runs from questions she cannot answer. Yet beneath the prickliness lives a fierce, observant tenderness and a hunger to be truly seen. Falling for Sonya2 cracks her open to desire she has long refused to name, while her reluctant bond with her father3 teaches her that needing people need not mean getting hurt. Her arc bends toward radical self-acceptance and the courage to demand love without shrinking.
Sonya
Magnetic closeted dancerThe town's dazzling it-girl, a champion competitive dancer accustomed to being adored and obeyed, Sonya is a chameleon who shows the world a glittering performance and reserves her unguarded, incandescent real self for rare, frightened moments. Raised by a controlling mother11 who policed her body and demanded perfection, she equates love with sacrifice and self-diminishment, and she clings to an on-off boyfriend4 as proof of belonging. Her LiveJournal and unsent emails expose a girl drowning in feelings she refuses to claim, terrified that loving another girl will shatter her family and status. Drawn helplessly to Coley1, Sonya oscillates between melting tenderness and panicked retreat, wounding the person she most wants. Her struggle is the agonizing distance between knowing yourself and daring to live it.
Curtis
Estranged, reforming fatherColey's1 father, a gray-streaked former musician who funds his life crafting silver-and-gemstone jewelry, abandoned Coley1 before she turned three and now inherits her by tragic default. Restless and gentle, he fumbles toward parenthood with notes, coffee, and clumsy offers, absorbing Coley's1 rage without retreating. He carries his own guilt and an old love for the woman who left him13, and he chooses, against Coley's1 expectations, to keep showing up and earning trust rather than running. His patient persistence becomes the counter-model to every abandonment Coley1 has known, and their slow repair, built on honesty and a shared to-do list, anchors the novel's quieter love story.
Trenton
Volatile bully exSonya's2 on-again-off-again boyfriend, a swaggering, manipulative bully with kaleidoscope eyes that flip from charming to menacing. He treats Sonya2 as property, weaponizes pranks, and curdles quickly into cruelty when challenged or denied. His casual entitlement and refusal to accept rejection make him the story's escalating external threat, the embodiment of the toxic world Sonya's2 closet keeps her tethered to.
Alex
Chill social chameleonThe group's easygoing diplomat, handsome and perpetually unbothered, Alex smooths conflicts and treats Coley1 with rare kindness from the start. He carries a secret life of his own and wrestles privately with his own attractions, making him a quietly sympathetic figure. His honesty, sometimes accidental, repeatedly forces truths into the open, and his decency contrasts sharply with Trenton's4 malice.
SJ
Sonya's loyal best friendOutwardly bitchy and status-conscious, SJ initially seems hostile to outsiders, but reveals unexpected emotional depth and loyalty. Shaped by her own family's experience with a sister's suicide attempt, she becomes a buffer and a truth-teller, the friend who genuinely watches others' backs and who values that quality in Coley1 once she recognizes it.
Faith
Openly queer dance rivalSonya's2 older former competitive-dance rival, home from college and unapologetically out. Sharp, knowing, and a little smug, Faith sees through Sonya's2 performance and serves as both warning voice about Trenton4 and a living glimpse of the freer queer future Sonya2 cannot imagine claiming. Her bluntness wounds, but her perception is rarely wrong.
Blake
Reckless aspiring piercerA spacey, bleach-blond convenience-store clerk turned body-piercing hopeful, Blake befriends Coley1 during a low point. Casual about her own queerness and scarred by hardship she shrugs off, she offers Coley1 distraction, a haircut, and a glimpse of detached self-protection. Impulsive and unreliable, she becomes a mirror for the numbness Coley1 risks adopting.
Brooke
Shallow, jealous hanger-onA privileged, status-anxious member of the friend group who nurses a not-so-secret crush on Trenton4 and resents Coley's1 intrusion. She tends to side with whoever holds power and serves as a petty antagonist within the social circle.
Emma
Sonya's adored sisterSonya's2 sweet eight-year-old half-sister, already learning to scrutinize herself in mirrors under their mother's11 influence. Emma represents what Sonya2 fears losing if her family fractures, and the innocent love Sonya2 most wants to protect.
Tracy
Controlling perfectionist motherSonya's2 image-obsessed mother, who critiques bodies and clothing, demands perfection in dance and grades, and trained Sonya2 to be still and ladylike. She is the root of Sonya's2 self-policing and her terror of being the thing that breaks the family apart.
Kendrick and Tye
Loving out coupleA server at Makoto's and his mushroom-growing boyfriend, this affectionate, openly committed gay couple show Coley1 that queer love can be ordinary, tender, and unhidden. They model the future she longs for and become part of her found family at the restaurant.
Coley's mother
Absent, mourned presenceThough deceased before the story begins, Coley's1 mother saturates every page. Fearless, witty, and prone to cycles of depression, she taught Coley1 to love hard and live hard, filled the fridge with affirmations when surfacing from lows, and ultimately could not stay. Her denim jacket, tiger's-eye pendant, and journals haunt Coley1 with love, guilt, and unanswerable questions.
Plot Devices
LiveJournal and AIM Entries
Dramatic irony engineInterspersed throughout Coley's1 first-person narration are Sonya's2 public LiveJournal posts, her private journal entries, AIM chat logs, and unsent emails. These windows into Sonya's2 hidden interior grant the reader knowledge Coley1 lacks, exposing that Sonya's2 coldness masks obsessive longing and love she refuses to voice aloud. The device generates sustained dramatic irony: we ache for Coley1 as she doubts what we know is real. It also charts Sonya's2 psychological deterioration at dance camp and frames the 2006 setting through period-specific digital intimacy, where away messages and screen names become instruments of both connection and cruelty.
Olive Juice
Coded confession of loveSonya2 teaches Coley1 that mouthing the words olive juice looks identical to saying I love you, and the phrase becomes their private cipher. It lets both girls confess feeling while retaining deniability, a linguistic closet that perfectly externalizes Sonya's2 inability to claim her love openly. The code recurs at emotional peaks, first as playful tenderness, later as desperate apology, tracking the relationship's oscillation between honesty and evasion. Its repetition makes the phrase a barometer of courage: speaking love safely is easy, but living it openly is the real test the story poses.
The Denim Jacket
Talisman of maternal griefColey1 wears her late mother's13 worn Levi's jacket like an embrace, still faintly scented with rose oil. It turns out to have originally belonged to Curtis3, who let her mother13 keep it, making it a quiet thread connecting all three. The jacket marks Coley's1 grief throughout, and leaving it behind at Sonya's2 house, then reclaiming it, becomes an act of recovering self from someone who diminished her. As the scent inevitably fades, it embodies the novel's meditation on which memories we must release to keep living and which we carry forever.
Tiger's-Eye Jewelry
Symbol of clarity and lineageCurtis3 handcrafts tiger's-eye pieces, including a pendant identical to the one Coley's1 mother was wearing when she died, and later a choker he gives Coley1. He explains tiger's-eye is associated with protection and clarity. The stone braids together mother, father, and daughter, transforming a painful reminder into an emblem of integration and healing. When Coley1 accepts the choker, she symbolically accepts both her father's3 love and her own need for clarity and self-protection, signaling her shift from isolation toward chosen connection and emerging self-worth.
The Railroad Tracks
Sanctuary and dangerThe train tracks near the stone bridge become the girls' private refuge, a place insulated from the town's watching eyes where they can balance on the rails, share stolen drinks, and lower their guard. The same setting twice delivers mortal danger, most pivotally when Coley1 tackles a drunk Sonya2 off the rails before an oncoming train. The tracks thus fuse intimacy with peril, the recurring pattern in which brushes with death dissolve the girls' defenses and force confession. The location embodies the romance itself: thrilling, exposed, and never entirely safe.
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