Celine Ong's Reviews > Girls Like Girls
Girls Like Girls
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by
Celine Ong's review
bookshelves: 2023-releases, arc, lgbtq-rep, lgbtq-sapphic, poc-rep, standalone, trope-insta-love
Nov 25, 2022
bookshelves: 2023-releases, arc, lgbtq-rep, lgbtq-sapphic, poc-rep, standalone, trope-insta-love
hayley kiyoko's girls like girls music video fundamentally altered the course of my entire life in this essay i—
based on hayley kiyoko’s music video, girls like girls follows coley who moves to rural oregon after losing her mother. there she bumps into sonya, a girl who runs with the popular crowd. as they spend the summer dancing on train tracks & getting high at parties, both girls find themselves running towards & away from each other. but you can only run from the truth for so long.
there are moments in life that are forever memorialized. sometimes a song comes on radio & transports you elsewhere; other times a certain smell will take you back to when you were young & it’s crystal clear again, like sunshine on water.
girls like girls is that for me. reading hayley’s debut novel, suddenly it’s 2015 again. i’m back in my bedroom in grubby nike sweats, sobbing to future lesbian jesus, freshly heartbroken over a girl who holds my hand & gives me her jacket. a girl who makes the songs all make sense.
(i’ve been crossing all the lines, all the lines / kissed your girls and made you cry)
reading this felt like watching an extended cinematic cut, the closest to a full length production many rallied for. hayley’s a musician, of course her writing reads lyrical—a little cringey & dramatic but beautiful all the same.
it was comfort i didn’t know i sought for, because it’s not 2015 anymore. now i’m on the other side of it looking back at coley and sonya, having learnt what they did: that you can’t control people—how or why they hurt us, how they leave our lives, how sometimes that trust is earned back but other times we have to learn how to let go. that things are kind of scary, but lots of good things are.
mostly, however, it was comfort i didn’t know i needed as turns out i had it in me all along. i’m no longer eighteen, no longer running after a girl. heartbroken no more. how grateful i am to every version of girls like girls for that awakening, both then and now.
✼ thank you to wednesday books for sending me an arc of girls like girls in exchange for an honest review.
“i could spend my life chasing her. devotedly. doggedly. but she could spend her life running. i might never catch up with her. that's what’s so scary about it.”
based on hayley kiyoko’s music video, girls like girls follows coley who moves to rural oregon after losing her mother. there she bumps into sonya, a girl who runs with the popular crowd. as they spend the summer dancing on train tracks & getting high at parties, both girls find themselves running towards & away from each other. but you can only run from the truth for so long.
there are moments in life that are forever memorialized. sometimes a song comes on radio & transports you elsewhere; other times a certain smell will take you back to when you were young & it’s crystal clear again, like sunshine on water.
girls like girls is that for me. reading hayley’s debut novel, suddenly it’s 2015 again. i’m back in my bedroom in grubby nike sweats, sobbing to future lesbian jesus, freshly heartbroken over a girl who holds my hand & gives me her jacket. a girl who makes the songs all make sense.
(i’ve been crossing all the lines, all the lines / kissed your girls and made you cry)
reading this felt like watching an extended cinematic cut, the closest to a full length production many rallied for. hayley’s a musician, of course her writing reads lyrical—a little cringey & dramatic but beautiful all the same.
it was comfort i didn’t know i sought for, because it’s not 2015 anymore. now i’m on the other side of it looking back at coley and sonya, having learnt what they did: that you can’t control people—how or why they hurt us, how they leave our lives, how sometimes that trust is earned back but other times we have to learn how to let go. that things are kind of scary, but lots of good things are.
mostly, however, it was comfort i didn’t know i needed as turns out i had it in me all along. i’m no longer eighteen, no longer running after a girl. heartbroken no more. how grateful i am to every version of girls like girls for that awakening, both then and now.
✼ thank you to wednesday books for sending me an arc of girls like girls in exchange for an honest review.
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Reading Progress
October 16, 2022
– Shelved
October 16, 2022
– Shelved as:
to-read
November 25, 2022
– Shelved as:
2023-releases
April 8, 2023
–
Started Reading
April 9, 2023
– Shelved as:
arc
April 9, 2023
– Shelved as:
lgbtq-sapphic
April 9, 2023
– Shelved as:
lgbtq-rep
April 9, 2023
– Shelved as:
poc-rep
April 9, 2023
– Shelved as:
standalone
April 9, 2023
– Shelved as:
trope-insta-love
April 9, 2023
–
Finished Reading
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Charlotte
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Apr 30, 2023 06:49PM
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i tend to write my reviews based on a book's emotional content and themes, often in relation to my journey with my own queerness. the book itself did have some drawbacks especially with regards to it's writing and did not hit as hard for me as compared to the music video.