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A Novel
by Gabrielle Korn
An unforgettable novel of love and belonging, set in the indie music world of the early 2000s.
The only thing Susan loves more than music is Eliza, and both keep breaking her heart.
The first time Susan and Eliza meet, it's 2005, and Susan is barreling down the Long Island Expressway driving a group of friends to an indie rock show. Eliza is a surprise addition to the backseat, and she doesn't quite fit in; she's a little too pretty, and she doesn't know anything about music, but Susan is drawn to her anyway. Their flying sparks lead to combustion when Susan recognizes Eliza as the girl from a nude photo boys have been sending around. They part ways, and Susan assumes that's the end of it. Susan goes off to college and onto a career in Brooklyn's indie music scene, where she navigates a toxic job at a small record label and learns hard lessons about who exactly has the privilege of making art under late-stage capitalism.
In 2015, in her twenties, Susan has a chance run-in with Eliza on a dating app, and they finally embark on a relationship. But Eliza is plagued by her traumatic past, which involves people Susan is still involved with, and that's where it all falls apart again. Over the next few years, Susan's career takes off, she helps dismantle a predatory work environment, and meets someone new who might actually be good for her. Yet she can't stop thinking about Eliza. What might have been, if things had gone differently? And who might Susan become if she could only let Eliza go?
At once a hilarious-yet-tender coming of age story; a steamy, complicated romance; and an authentic celebration of queer joy, Long Island Girls is for anyone who has ever struggled to stop getting caught up in "what-ifs" and start appreciating what is.
"Korn channels the angst of the early 2000s indie music scene in this effective appeal to millennial nostalgia...Tender...a clear-eyed gaze into the messiness of youth." —Publishers Weekly
"Unflinching...Perfectly depicting every era of the 2000s and what it was like to come of age on the internet, this tenderly angsty novel is a delightful ode to the queer millennial experience." —Booklist
"An exploration of how first loves can imprint and the long shadow they cast." —Library Journal
"Achingly emotional, Gabrielle Korn's Long Island Girls is an electric story of first love and the people we can't forget no matter how hard we try. Full of longing, lust, and nostalgia, this is a knock-out!" ―Carley Fortune, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Every Summer After and One Golden Summer
"A captivating, sprawling, queer coming-of-age story―a nostalgic mixtape that begins in the early aughts and ends in post-COVID Los Angeles. I read it in one sitting, cued up a 2006 playlist, and tried not to text the girl who got away. It's like a queer Love in the Time of Cholera for anyone who's ever powered on an old phone to relive their first love." ―Tegan Quin, bestselling author of High School
This information about Long Island Girls was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Gabrielle Korn is the author of Everybody (Else) Is Perfect and the former Editor-in-Chief of Nylon. She recently led LGBTQ+ strategy at Netflix, and her writing has been published across the internet since 2011, with bylines in Instyle, Coveteur, Autostraddle, Nylon, Refinery29, Oprah, and more. Originally from New York, she now lives in Los Angeles with her wife, and together they run The Pink Door artist and writer residency.
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