Books like Fighting for Our Friendships — picked by fans

This novel shows us how the sisters in our lives aren’t always connected by blood. That sometimes, our chosen sisters are the ones who carry us through life’s difficult moments.

Malek, Kees, and Jenna have been lifelong friends, but when a single argument threatens to pull them apart, can they find their way back to one another? Alternating between each woman’s story, the novel explores deeper themes of love, family, and faith while also shedding light on both the strengths and fragility of female relationships.

If a book kicks off with someone planning to end it all… at a fancy hotel, in the middle of an influencer wedding… I'm in.

The premise suggests anything but romance and comedy. The Wedding People soon becomes warm, strange, and generous. I've been to a fair few pressure cooker nuptials in my time. Guests ratchet up smiles no matter what.

I loved how, in this book, grief collides with celebration. More than that, I love how the story ends on a hopeful note, rather than trying to leave everything neat and tidy. There's a glorious sense of people behaving very badly indeed, and still finding ways to be happy. And in dark times, that's exactly what I ask of a good book.

I flew through Wahala. Pacy, suspenseful, and binge-able, this novel did not disappoint; it delivered in all areas. Zany, memorable characters – tick. Messy, complicated entanglements – tick. Tantalising, mouth-watering descriptions of Nigerian food served in south London restaurants – tick, tick. (The author kindly included a few recipes at the back of the book!) Wahala reminded me of how enjoyable reading can be when you find a widely-entertaining book that you can kick back and sink your teeth into. An engrossing, riveting read that explores the complexity of adult female friendships, I highly recommend it. 

I loved this book so very much because it’s honest, raw, and so funny. I think that most of us can agree that life is both beautiful and brutal. It’s okay to admit that even the best of times can be rife with bullshit. The events leading up to some of my best memories were disastrous. The author gets that and unabashedly tells her embarrassing, uncomfortable, cringe-worthy, tragic stories.

I felt seen and in good company when reading it. Here’s the thing: I relished cackling over the stories of Ellis and her people because they felt familiar—they felt like my people. Ellis is the funny one in her friend group. I am the funny one in mine. I feel she and I could get into some real trouble together. Even better? We could co-write a killer essay in the aftermath. 

It is a fun Gothic novel.

In this magnificent genre, Diane Setterfield brings a lightness to the spells and spooks of generational trauma. I love how she gives homage to the need to write through her two main characters, both writers hiding personal truths and harboring demons that they express through their storytelling. 

Margaret, a young biographer, is beckoned by Vida Winters, a famous and reclusive author, to join her at her mysterious estate and begin to interview her, record, and write her life story. The two writers open doors, real and imagined, that blow out the cobwebs and ignite old, dangerous fires that belong to the past. 

It is written with such warmth, unsettling darkness, and generous color. I wanted to take days off to just sit and finish this book in a marathon read….it was so engaging, satisfying, and fluid. 

Unlike many fantasy novels, the protagonist, Sian Katte isn't an adolescent. When I read this book in my 40s, I identified with the main characters. They've already come of age, but their lives are nonetheless turned upside when Sian gains an unexpected and unwanted magical ability. She is forced out of her routine and becomes a lynchpin in the political turnings of the tropical island nation of Alizar – a fantasy setting that resonates with the familiar while maintaining its uniqueness and rich history. 

Friendship takes work. These ongoing, necessary maintenance efforts are not the dramatic material of most friendship novels, but this book is all the more admirable for examining its realities.

This book tells the story of May, an independent, not unhappy but somewhat lonely woman on the brink of 40, who hasn’t made much effort with her far-flung friends—or any friends—in years. Presented with a 30-day leave from her job as a gardener at a university, she makes plans to visit four old friends for a few days each.

May is warmly welcomed, though the reunions are often stilted, sometimes awkward, and that’s what makes them honest: you can’t skip the hard parts when you’re learning a new rhythm, even with an old friend. Post-pandemic, this is an especially good book for people trying to find their way back to IRL friendships.

In her character Emma, Lane paints a painfully relatable picture of a career woman trapped by the daily grind of motherhood.

Emma takes entry-level anti-depressants to get through the day (been there, done that) and yearns for a spark of intellectual and emotional stimulation to make herself feel validated. This makes her easy prey for glamorous, predatory artist, Nina. I was silently screaming at Emma to back away before it was too late while revelling in Lane’s exquisite descriptions of middle-class suburbia and the casual sleights inflicted by Emma’s thoughtless, selfish husband.

This is domestic noir at its darkest and most devastating best. 

Musician and author Thorn places Go-Betweens drummer Lindy Morrison in the spotlight in this warm, often fiery book which, as a sometime drummer, I loved and related to very keenly. It is a love letter, as so many biographies are, albeit as much to a friendship as it is to an artist. But it is also a reflection on how women interact, how women navigate the music industry, how creative, clever women (like female biographers!) are often dismissed, trivialised, undermined, even silenced. Women will get great strength from My Rock ‘n’ Roll Friend, and as for men, well, the world would probably be a better place if more chaps connected with this book.

Written during COVID, but not about the pandemic, BFF is for those of us who are less-than-perfect friends.

Her lifelong struggles to define and live up to her impossible ideals of friendship are instantly relatable. She’ll annoy you and maybe make you mad, but you’ll cheer her on for her desire to do the right thing. Her challenges are ours, too.

In fact, reading how she coped with the loss of her best friend was a comfort to me. Because I read it at a time when I was devastated by a similar loss.