Reviews with content warning for Injury/Injury detail - Girls Like Girls

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Girls Like Girls by Hayley Kiyoko

10 reviews

robinks's review against another edition

emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

It was lovely to hear Kiyoko narrating her own novel. Having other voice actors and certain sounds within the audiobook was an interesting choice but also ended up taking me out of the story. I found myself rolling my eyes at some of the scenes too.

I also haaaated Sonya’s character, which made Coley’s feelings for her hard to understand, and I’m annoyed that they end up together (though I do appreciate the nod to the Girls Like Girls music video).

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kyrstin_p1989's review against another edition

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emotional funny hopeful lighthearted sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

I thought this was really a sweet story about initial love and finding out who you are but I really disliked the characters in the story, particularly Sonya and Trenton. I don’t like the way that love is portrayed in some ways, particularly as something that always has elements of harm or hurt. That’s an unhealthy way to describe love, especially to the target audience of this novel which are upper middle/high school aged kids. I didn’t love the ending, because it felt like a cop out. The characters hadn’t changed all that much and they weren’t ready to make the choices they had made — it all felt too sped up. But, Coley and her dad building a relationship out of really negative circumstances was a beautiful plot line.

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jennabeck13's review against another edition

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hopeful inspiring lighthearted medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

Girls Like Girls by Hayley Kiyoko

⭐️⭐️ (2/5)

Genre: Romance

About 305 pages

Sonya is your typical popular teenage girl. She can get any guy she wants, is a beautiful dancer, and gets invited to all the parties. Meanwhile, Coley just moved to town after losing her mother and is trying to make friends, which is how the two of them meet one day. From that day forward, their lives will change. They have an attraction neither has ever experienced before. But Sonya is afraid to come to terms with her sexuality, and Coley is terrified of being left behind again. If they never discuss their feelings for one another, can they ever come together in the way they hoped?

I’ve been a fan of Becca Tilley since she was on The Bachelor, and since she has been dating Hayley, that’s how I came to know Hayley and therefore this book. This was a cute novel, but not my favorite. I feel like it was targeted more at the young adult demographic, as the characters felt very immature at times. I was not a fan of Sonya, but I did like Coley and wish we got to see her stand up for herself more often. I also wish we got to read more about how her relationship with her dad grew, as I really enjoyed the little bit of that that we got in this book.

Favorite Quote: “We can’t control what people do— how they betray us or even why. How they leave our lives. So many people are running scared. And sometimes they run back to us and earn back our trust. But the ones who don’t come back— or who don’t work to earn back what they lost from us— we have to learn how to let them go.”

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taylorsevalia's review against another edition

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dark emotional funny hopeful sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

Loved the small town vibes and coming of age queer story! This year, I started to gravitate more towards audiobooks after it took me years to find the kind of audiobooks I like. I’m happy to say I decided to listen to the audiobook first because this is the best one I’ve read! I need Hayley Kiyoko to narrate all the books from now on and for me to read more books that tell stories as atmospherically as this one did!

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keraashley's review against another edition

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challenging emotional hopeful reflective sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Main love interest is kind of insufferable and I really wanted this to be light hearted and easy and happy, because girls like girls and it’s fine!! But no, Hayley made this plot so tough.

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peggymay's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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bumblemee's review against another edition

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emotional reflective fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Ich bin wahrscheinlich eine der wenigen Personen, die dieses Buch gelesen haben (oder gehört in meinem Fall) und das Musikvideo bis kurz vor Beenden des Buchs nicht kannten. Ich weiß nicht, wie ich es finden würde, würde mir dieses Musikvideo viel bedeuten, weil ich nicht abschätzen kann, wie ich mir die Beziehung der beiden vorgestellt hätte, ohne das Buch dabei im Kopf zu haben. Persönlich finde ich, dass es wie eine sehr gute Umsetzung des Videos wirkt.

Das Buch war schnell zu hören (unter 9h) und irgendwie hat es mich komplett eingesogen. Liegt z.T. wahrscheinlich daran, dass es im Sommer spielt und ich es im Sommer gehört habe, was die Stimmung einfach unterstreicht. Es ist jedoch kein locker leichtes Buch, im Gegenteil. Für leichtherzige Sommervibes sind andere Bücher besser geeignet. Es fühlt sich an wie eine authentische Zeitkapsel von 2006 und wie die vereinzelten queeren Geschichten, die vor so 10 Jahren oder so rausgekommen sind oder die als eigene Texte auf Fanfiction-Seiten veröffentlicht wurden. Ich denke, dieses Video wäre nicht so durch die Decke gegangen, wenn sich nicht so viele Menschen darin gesehen hätten und diese Menschen werden sich demensprechend auch in diesem Buch sehen. Gerade eben Personen, die in den 2000ern und frühen 2010ern als queere Personen aufgewachsen sind.
Ich verstehe, wenn Leute sagen, die Beziehung der beiden sei problematisch, v.a. aufgrund von Sonyas Verhalten. Ich muss sagen, dass ich Sonya als gut geschrieben empfunden habe. Ihr Kampf mit sich selbst wirkt realistisch auf mich.

So zum Beispiel auch, dass sie sogar in ihrem privaten Tagebuch um den heißen Brei herumredet und oft nicht genau benennt, dass es um Homosexualität geht, ob nun ihre eigene oder die von anderen.

Dementsprechend ergibt für mich auch die Beziehungsentwicklung Sinn. Es geht zwar alles schnell und das Ende ist fast unangemessen happy, aber auch das wirkte auch mich wie eine Beziehung zwischen Jugendlichen, die genauso laufen kann - nur, weil gesunde Beziehungsentwicklungen eine gute Sache sind, heißt das nicht, das Jugendliche das auf die Kette bekommen (tun Erwachsene ja auch oft nicht).
Im Zuge dessen glaube ich nicht, dass es dem Buch gut tut, wenn es als "Romance" verkauft wird, weil das nicht wirklich stimmt. Dafür liegt der Fokus meiner Meinung nach zu sehr auf Identitätsfindung und schon der Erzählung einer Beziehung, aber eben keiner, die besonders swoonworthy verläuft. Zu großen Teilen fühlt es sich eher authentisch als schön an, dieses Buch zu hören. Mir ist an einigen Stellen wirklich das Herz schwer geworden.

Coley habe ich sehr geliebt. Sie ist toll und erinnert mich total an Protagonistinnen, über die ich als Jugendliche gerne gelesen habe - Becca aus Lucian zum Beispiel, ich habe jetzt wirklich Lust auf einen Reread.

Ich kann außerdem das Hörbuch echt empfehlen, die Sprecherin macht das richtig gut und ihre Stimme passt zu Coley, finde ich. Es kann sogar sein, dass ich das Buch auf diese Weise besser fand als wenn ich die Printversion gelesen hätte.

.. Ich werde dieses Review hier nun abschließen, weil ich das Gefühl habe, viel zu diesem Buch zu sagen zu haben, das aber nicht gut formulieren zu können. Es hat auf jeden Fall einen Special Place in meinem Herzen irgendwie.
(Was mich allerdings tatsächlich etwas genervt hat, war, dass auch in der dt Übersetzung nie das Wort "Mädchen" verwendet wurde, sondern immer "Girl". Was im Zsmhang mit dem Song/Titel Sinn ergibt, aber es wirkte manchmal einfach, als wolle jemand gewollt cool klingen.)

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logikitty's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.75

I think for a debut novel, it wasn't shabby. I got a bit annoyed with the general style of the super short sentences and random 'poetics' that showed up - it felt real cringey NGL. I do understand the teenage romance and the lesbophobia aspects of it, so I can't fault the characters for not standing up for their relationship and there being a lot of back and forth. In fact, Kiyoko made that part hella accurate, so props to having developmentally approriate characters. I think I just didn't resonate with the trajectory of the plot as most of it just felt like disconnected hangouts to create a theme and conflict. The cute throwbacks were great tho! The flip phones, LiveJournal, and AIM had young me squealing!

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nightworldlove's review against another edition

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emotional funny reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Really enjoyed the book, different than what I expected, but not necessarily in a bad way! It's not easy to make people feel so strongly about a, or multiple, characters. Loved the several references to different songs of Hayley Kiyoko, was a nice touch!

I've laughed, felt anxious, sad and outraged; definitely an emotional rollercoaster, so be prepared for that!

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merlesstorys's review against another edition

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emotional inspiring lighthearted fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I picked this book up because it aid by Hayley Kiyoko and she is one of my favorite queer artists.

In general, I really liked this book. It‘s rather fast paced, and the characters were nice.

However I feel like it was too short with it’s about 300 pages. In the end, the character development rather lacked - there was definitely not enough substance in them for the last 80 pages. Every story was closed fast, and many important story beats were done by like 4 pages each, when it worked there (mostly

the conflict with her father, her finding a new friend and losing her, and the conflict and fight between Coley and Sonya

). It could have used a 100 pages more to show us more of the inside of characters and explain many of their motivation between actions, before and after the typical conflict.

Especially, as already named, the thing between rhe main characters is fixed up in the last : chapters with a maximum of 20 pages added up, at most, which was just too less to really root for them.

The characters were mostly great, with Alex being a favorite of mine. But they weren’t too much developed, especially the friend group. They were just stereotypes made out of cardboard, without much else to them. We never learn motivations, backgrounds, personalities.
The main characters Coley and Sonya are nicely written though, with an honorable mention for the diary entries of the latter - that were mostly never explained.

But what redeemed this book in the end was the fact that it used many of the locations of the same titled music video, which launched the music career by Kiyoko.

Also the fact that this whole story takes place in 2006 makes much sens, regarding the lack of smartphones in the teen group and everything.

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