Gabrielle Korn

An unforgettable novel of love and belonging, set in the indie music world of the early 2000s.

The only thing Susan loves more than music is Eliza, and both keep breaking her heart.

The first time Susan and Eliza meet, it's 2005, and Susan is barreling down the Long Island Expressway driving a group of friends to an indie rock show. Eliza is a surprise addition to the backseat, and she doesn't quite fit in; she's a little too pretty, and she doesn't know anything about music, but Susan is drawn to her anyway. Their flying sparks lead to combustion when Susan recognizes Eliza as the girl from a nude photo boys have been sending around. They part ways, and Susan assumes that’s the end of it. Susan goes off to college and onto a career in Brooklyn's indie music scene, where she navigates a toxic job at a small record label and learns hard lessons about who exactly has the privilege of making art under late-stage capitalism.

In 2015, in her twenties, Susan has a chance run-in with Eliza on a dating app, and they finally embark on a relationship. But Eliza is plagued by her traumatic past, which involves people Susan is still involved with, and that's where it all falls apart again. Over the next few years, Susan's career takes off, she helps dismantle a predatory work environment, and meets someone new who might actually be good for her. Yet she can't stop thinking about Eliza. What might have been, if things had gone differently? And who might Susan become if she could only let Eliza go?

At once a hilarious-yet-tender coming of age story; a steamy, complicated romance; and an authentic celebration of queer joy, Long Island Girls is for anyone who has ever struggled to stop getting caught up in "what-ifs" and start appreciating what is.

Long Island Girls

Emma Hak-Kovacs

His appeal was kind of transcendent that way; he was an anomaly, something only boys were granted permission to be.

They laughed for a long time at that, until Susan wasn't sure if they were still laughing about the exchange or just from the pure joy of being together in a new place, twenty years after they first met and closer than ever.

When she looks at Katie, she sees every age they've been at once. Behind those deepening grooves around her mouth, there's still a seventeen-year-old girl giving Susan shit for chewing Sunchips too loudly while she paints her nails navy blue and daydreams about the future.

…She writes: Loves music, movies, and trying new things. She's learned it's the small moments between the big ones where real happiness lives, and she knows this makes her kind of basic, but she doesn't care.

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