Hey, Wattpaders! I'm so excited to be back with you for another Block Party! Big thanks to Kelly for hosting and asking me back for a fifth time! Today I'm going to be talking to you about one of my favorite topics—friendship in YA, specifically intense, nuanced female friendships and why they're important.

With aspirational #squadgoals and girl squads popularized in the last few years, we're starting to see TV, film, and literature start to examine the complexity of friendship in a deeper way. Which! I! Am! So! Excited! About! Especially books like the (newly released!) NOT THE GIRLS YOU'RE LOOKING FOR by Aminah Mae Safi and the March 2019 SMALL TOWN HEARTS by me!

But let's not forget about the OGs of YA BFFs. I remember devouring The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, The Baby-sitters Club, and Nancy Drew as a young reader and thinking: This is sisterhood. Then, as a teen, getting into One Tree Hill and Gossip Girl, and getting my first glimpse of friends who loved as fiercely as they hated, who wielded their tongues like a blade and knew exactly where to cut so it hurt. It seemed so at odds with the rosy glow of friendship I remembered as a kid, and at the same time....not so at odds.

Girls like Peyton, Brooke, Serena, and Blair spent as much time on the outs as they did having each other's backs. Sometimes they raised each other up and celebrated each other in YASSS QUEEN moments (yes, before that was even a thing), and I loved them for it. Sometimes they were frenemies and I exasperatedly wondered why they were even friends.

I grew up, made friends, lost some along the way. And I learned this, too: Friendships aren't static. And sometimes a change—a betrayal, usually—can lead two girls who thought they knew who they were and what their friendship was, to evolve in ways which are imperfect, confusing, and sometimes downright hostile. And I also knew, even back then, before I even decided I wanted to be an author, that exploring the dynamics of changing friendships was going to be important to me.

It would take many friendships later before I wrote the first book where this happened—2016 Watty winner Willa & the Extraordinary Internship. Then, a few months later, I was writing the book that would one day become my debut novel, SMALL TOWN HEARTS (formerly BITTER BREWS). In both iterations of this story, Babe, my main character, had a tumultuous relationship with her two best friends. They were fierce in their care of each other, and ruthless in how they responded to changes. They were all flawed, all strong, all selfish in their own ways. They weren't the rosy Nancy and Bess from childhood, but something sharper, more incendiary. And I loved them for it.

And considering how formative, inspirational, and necessary that friendships are, it really bothers me that we aren't really taught how to sustain them. Nothing stays the same forever, even if we want it to, and there's so many ways in which a friendship can end—a big blow-up conflict, a slow-fade "I hope they don't notice what I'm doing", the natural drifting apart when you no longer share the same interests, and, of course, ghosting. To name a few.

We just aren't taught how to evolve in ways where we know how to manage a relationship that changes when we do. Many times, we either force ourselves to still function in the old mold, even when it doesn't fit. Or we are content to let things drift, because...well, it's easy. No one likes having the "This isn't working" conversation.

It amazes me how many YA books put solely romance on a pedestal. That getting the Love Interest is the end game. That it's totally okay if the main character's female friends can't pass the Bechdel test. That they exist just to prop her up. Like, what about the obligatory memes? The hilarious GIFs? The deep soul-searching conversations that happen at 3 a.m.? WHAT THE FORK, MY DUDES. These beloved cornerstones of BFF-hood are being ignored!!!

Yeah, romance and kissing is nice, but do not underestimate friendship—the world NEEDS these complicated, figuring-friends-out books. Because there are a thousand and one places where friendship can go wrong, and if reading teaches us empathy, then surely reading about friendship teaches us something invaluable, too? For me, and for Babe, it was how to find our way back to our friends without losing ourselves—or each other—along the way. For you, it might be something else.

I firmly believe that friendship, especially female friendship, should be just as significant and valid in books. They are no less intimate than romantic and sexual relationships, even though pretty much every narrative we're taught since childhood reinforces that romance is definitely at the top of the pyramid. And yet friendship can be just as complicated, heart-warming, and sometimes even devastating...if not more so.

SMALL TOWN HEART'S Babe, on the cusp of a Big Change that she fears will change the dynamic of her friend group, has no idea how to deal. She makes mistakes, she's flawed, she's struggling. At the start of the novel, her shared history, loyalty, and love for her friends means more to her than even the promise of a what-could-be with the new boy in her town or the reappearance of her ex-girlfriend.

This is the best friend break-up(?) story that teen me needed.

SMALL TOWN HEARTS won't be coming out until March 2019, so I'd love to share a few other great friendship books.

NOT THE GIRLS YOU'RE LOOKING FOR by Aminah Mae Safi

SINCE YOU'VE BEEN GONE by Morgan Matson

FANGIRL by Rainbow Rowell (fun fact, this was the book that got me reading—and eventually writing!—contemporary, thanks to my best friend)

What great friendship books have you read recently? Do friendship themes in YA resonate deeply with you?

Thanks for checking out my post! Don't forget to check out my international first chapter critique giveaway!

And here's to all the friends we've made: for a season, for a reason, or for a lifetime

Love,

Lillie