Strange Girls

Quotes

Named Most Anticipated by Harper's Bazaar, Bustle, LitHub, Dazed, Library Journal, Electric Literature, and Book Riot

"Finally, a book that gives the agony and angst of friendship breakups its literary due...The novel switches back and forth between timelines, painting a compelling portrait of the complexities of platonic heartbreak."
—Harper's Bazaar

"Masterfully weaving through past and present and between the threads of tension, jealousy, and tenderness, Strange Girls is a triumphant portrait of female friendship."
—Bustle, "10 Best New Books of March"

"In this irresistible U.S. debut.... Hasin crafts an intriguing story full of ambitions, jealousy, and homoerotic female friendship that readers will not be able to shake free from."
—Booklist

"In uncomplicated and enthralling prose, Strange Girls encapsulates the orbital resonance of two women who feel certain of who they are while still becoming who they will be, and the beauty and mess of what people ask of each other in their closest relationships."
—Shelf Awareness

"The beauty in Hasin’s U.S. debut is how she flawlessly and seemingly effortlessly brings readers into intimate moments without feeling intrusive. Heart lives on every page. The highs and lows of Ava and Aliya’s relationship shine in the quiet moments between the two. The silence and yearning are heartbreaking."
—Debutiful

"Hasin's writing is evocative and addictive, layering in issues of class, place and race into an otherwise introspective and detailed novel."
—Dazed

“Simply sublime—about that feverish, feral first finding of true friendship that becomes all-encompassing and reforms who you are.”
—Kiran Millwood Hargrave, author of The Mercies

“Sarvat Hasin is a storming talent and Strange Girls is a beautiful and yearning read.”
—Daisy Johnson, author of Everything Under

“Vivid, layered, and sharp, Strange Girls is a striking portrait that captures the messy, tense, and beautiful struggles where friendship meets longing. Sarvat Hasin has penned a novel profoundly tender and unrelenting. I envy whoever reads it next for the very first time."
—Lucy Rose, author of The Lamb

"Compulsive and all-consuming, Strange Girls charts the intoxicating waters of friendship where you are both seen too clearly and yet not at all. Hasin devastatingly evokes that fumbling age of identity construction, of finding meaning and purpose in another person when you fear there's none you can find in yourself, at once lost yet entirely particular. I'm obsessed."
—Kat Dunn, author of Hungerstone

"I absolutely ate Strange Girls up. Hasin writes fraught friendships, chaotic codependency and queer longing with consummate sensitivity and wryness."
—Gráinne O'Hare, author of Thirst Trap

"Intimate yet mysterious, Strange Girls is a tense and enthralling portrait of a relationship that resists definition: friendship, romance, sisterhood. Sarvat Hasin writes love in all its troubling forms with beautiful nuance, and this novel is an entire world unto itself. You'll hate to leave it."
—Mikaella Clements and Onjuli Datta, authors of The View Was Exhausting

“A novel of rare clarity and insight, aching with a complex, deeply felt love. I was captivated and moved from the outset.”
—Megan Hunter, author of The End We Start From

“A novel both radiant with the brightness and wonder of youth, and wise-eyed with the dissolution of idealism. Sarvat Hasin is a brilliant chronicler of the human heart, and this book will move and enthrall anyone who has been deeply entwined in friendship, love, and nostalgia. (that is, everyone!)”
—Sharlene Teo, author of Ponti

“Strange Girls is another dreamy, hypnotic novel from Sarvat Hasin, a writer who is a consummate expert in evoking the sweetness and pain of nostalgia. It's a poetic ode to yearning and desire; a book that transports the reader to hazy sunlit afternoons, the faint scent of cigarette smoke, lipstick on wine glasses, words that go unspoken and love that lingers forever. Utterly gorgeous.”
—Jennifer Saint, author of Ariadne

“I adored Strange Girls. Beautifully written, Sarvat Hasin perfectly captures university life in the noughties, the all-consuming intimacy of closeted queer-coded relationships between young women, and the unbearable weight of unspoken feelings. Perfection.”
—Alice Slater, author of Death of a Bookseller

"Touching, infuriating and painfully true, Strange Girls is a superlative novel by one of our most perceptive writers. Sarvat Hasin is an artist whose work demands to be read."
—Julia Armfield, author of Our Wives Under the Sea