Text Me When You Get Home: The Evolution and Triumph of Modern Female Friendship

For a book about female friendships it sure does spend a ridiculous amount of time talking about men. I was looking for a heartwarming pick-me-up while I'm feeling far away from all my closest friends but instead I found 100+ pages of how so many early friendships are super fake and then a bunch of gush about how adult friends are the bestest thing ever with no nuanced look at the complexities that make these relationships as special as they are. I legitimately started to question if my friendship experiences were somehow super rare since I've had close female friends since middle school and none of those friendships have ever resembled the "normal," "typically" relationships she describes.The introduction had potential, it went down hill from there.

Boy did I hate this book. It's like a mean girl wrote about how great she is and then got someone to publish it. Absolute garbarge. Not interesting, poorly written, dreary read.

For a first in our book club, all 13 women agreed they did not like this book. The topic had a lot of potential but the substance was not well developed.

The timing couldn’t be better for this book to be written. Although it doesn’t provide you with new revelations, per se, it’s fun as a woman to read a collection of facts and anecdotes that match your experiences and support a fact you already know: that your girlfriends are your rock and a part of your family. I love how this book challenges the supposition that women are “catty” and takes a hard look at the bias that pervades so many female stereotypes. I read this for an all-female book club and we rejoiced thoroughly in its “feel good” message and all of us walked away from this novel texting our BFFs around the world to let them know we love them, need them, and can’t live without them!

I appreciated this celebration of friendship and specifically friendship among women. However, I wish the author could have celebrated female friendship without putting down the validity of friendships between men & women. The idea that men and women cannot have deep, enriching relationships is just as antiquated as the idea that women need a husband to be fulfilled or that friendships among women are built on cattiness. However, the author devotes a lot of the earlier part of the book to quotes about how men can never understand women or can never provide true friendship. I also would have appreciated greater depth and more history rather than the interviews. From what I understood, the women quoted seemed to be similar - urban, highly educated, career-focused so their experiences aren't representative of female friendships. An interesting enough read but one that left me wanting more information.

I didn’t finish this. Maybe it got better. But at the halfway point, I didn’t want to spend anymore time with this author. Ostensibly this book is for Gen X-ish and Millennial women and seeks to provide scientific substantiation as to why female friendships are so vital. But the author seems to have come from a different time and place than me and all my (invaluable) girlfriends. She spends the first half of the book talking about overcoming her mental blocks about female friendships. I feel sorry for her for spending so much of her life like that. If the book had stronger narration, I might have stuck it out. But it’s written as the worst kind of non-fiction: clunky and cold. It’s like a school text book and that’s a big “no thanks” from me. I already know how important my girlfriends are. I don’t need to suffer through a boring semester at junior college studying the “why” which is what this book felt like.Please note: if you have not yet come to the realization that your girlfriends fill a vital role in your life and should be valued high on your list of priorities, maybe you need to read this book.

Reading this story of different friend, friend groups makes me appreciate and love every one of my girlfriends to tell them how smart, fun, inspiring they are to me. Thank you, Kayleen, for writing this book and sharing it with the world!

I read this as an audio book first and then bought this paperback as a gift. I thought the book was a great, fast read. It kept my attention throughout, and there are several instances where I could relate to the author and her experiences and memories with her girl friends. It’s a quick read and would make for a good Book Club read. It provokes a lot of good discussion amongst women. I think this would make a great gift for your BFFs in your life; especially to those that you inevitably say “text me when you get home” after you depart from a fun filled evening together.

what a glorious expose on female friendship. I left the book with appreciating the richness of my friends.

A great read for a girl to appreciate her friends, rekindle old friendships and make new ones.

This book hit me right in the feels. I read it and passed it on to my mom who also loved it.

Just an account on friends related pop culture

The book is definitely written from a privileged/ skewed POV (I.e. that of white, cis-straight middle class women) and is pretty eurocentric and, at times, cisnormative, however, it is still an easy and interesting read and I'd recommend it to others - just be aware of the above limitations.