Girl Crushed by Katie Heaney
Knopf Books for Young Readers, 2020, 304 pages
Trigger Warnings: N/A
About the Author: Katie Heaney is a writer from Minnesota, living in Brooklyn. She is the author of the memoirs Never Have I Ever and Would You Rather?, as well as the novels Dear Emma and Public Relations (co-authored with Arianna Rebolini). Her young adult debut, Girl Crushed, will be published in April 2020. She has written for the New York Times’ Modern Love column, Cosmopolitan, New York Magazine, The Atlantic, and others. Before joining The Cut, where she’s a senior writer, she worked as a freelance writer, and at Buzzfeed as a writer and editor.
Website: katieheaney.com
Twitter: @KTHeaney
Instagram: @katieheaney
“I didn’t know there was more than one way for things to turn out okay, in the end.”
Quinn Ryan is girl crushed. Her best-friend-slash-girlfriend, Jamie, broke up with her the summer before they embarked on their senior year of high school, and now Quinn is torn between still having feelings for Jamie and developing new ones for resident cool girl Ruby Ocampo. It doesn’t help that Jamie seems to be completely over Quinn. On top of relationship drama, Quinn’s dream of playing soccer for UNC and moving on to play professionally seems to be slipping through her fingers and her favorite lesbian coffee shop is in danger going out of business. Quinn spends her senior year feeling lost, but also determined to get what she wants: a girlfriend who loves her as much as she loves them, a spot on one of her top school choice soccer teams, and to save her one safe haven from shutting down.
Girl Crushed is one of those books that you need to read when you’re feeling a bit lost and confused yourself at any age. Quinn has had the same idea of what her life would look like for so long that she isn’t even sure that she wants it anymore beyond fulfilling that dream—so what happens when you realize it’s okay that things don’t go as planned? By the end of the book, Quinn learns an important lesson: everything can go wrong, but it’s possible to make it out alive and lean into the unknown. Beyond exploring the terrifying uncertainties of high school, Katie Heaney accurately captures the experience of being a lesbian in high school down to the last word. The only concern I have is Quinn and Jamie’s tendency to assume other people’s sexualities, but Heaney does address that issue when Ruby sternly tells Quinn she’s wrong to do so.
PRR Writer, Caroline Ross
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