These Girls Out Here

“A moving, startlingly funny novel about class, ambition, and the friendships that outlast our messiest selves.… Impossible to put down.” –Brit Bennett, New York Times bestselling author of The Vanishing Half

From the critically acclaimed author of The Final Revival of Opal & Nev, a novel of friendship, old secrets, and the primal conundrum: What do you do when the person you love does the unforgivable?

Twenty-five years after they first bonded down South as freshmen at an HBCU, Yoli Gardner Simpson and Shauna Morris are now living their New York dream. It’s opening night of Broadway’s buzziest show, created by none other than Yoli’s husband, Tunde, and the two best friends watch ecstatically as they realize they have a surefire hit on their hands. Then a mysterious young woman rushes in and disrupts the rapturous applause in an explosive act that leaves Shauna and Yoli shaken and with a thousand questions.

In the weeks after, Tunde refuses to mention the incident at all. Suspicious, Yoli and Shauna can’t help but investigate. Their digging reveals an ugly truth that worsens the deeper they go, one that may ruin Yoli’s perfect-seeming life along with their friendship. Now the women are forced to reckon with secrets that go back decades to one formative summer on Martha’s Vineyard, when their bond was solidified with an unspoken pact of silence. For so long they’ve thought of themselves as closer than sisters, but now Yoli and Shauna are left to wonder: Have they ever actually been friends?

As summer kicks into gear and the schism between them seems uncrossable, fate brings them both back to the Vineyard. Amid the sea breezes, dazzling parties, and their most intimate memories, perhaps their friendship can get a second chance.

From the late 1990s to 2023, from the South Carolina Lowcountry to New York to Martha’s Vineyard, These Girls Out Here is a funny, honest, heartbreaking look at fraught legacies, difficult choices, and how far loyalty can stretch before breaking.