Judy Blume’s 1998 bestseller Summer Sisters follows two girls as they grow into women, told over a course of summers spent on Martha’s Vineyard. The novel opens in 1990, with Victoria receiving a phone call from her old friend Caitlin—she’s getting married in a week, and hopes Victoria will be her maid of honor. As Vix grapples with this decision, the novel takes us back to 1977 when their friendship, and our story, begins. On an otherwise normal day of sixth grade, Caitlin approaches Vix out of the blue and invites her to spend the summer at her father’s beach house. At twelve years old, the girls couldn’t be more different—Caitlin is blonde, outspoken, and free-spirited while Vix is brunette, reserved, and mature for her age—and yet by the end of that first summer, the two are inseparable. Over the next six years, the self-proclaimed summer sisters experience everything together, from first jobs and puberty to longing and heartache, all set against the intense highs and lows of best friendship. It all comes to a head the summer before college, when a series of painful events causes Vix to come to terms with her reality: friendship is not family, and she is still just a visitor to this world of privilege and wealth. Now, years later, Vix will have to decide if she can return to the Vineyard and her summer sister without shattering the secure, independent self she’s worked so hard to construct.

When it comes to girlhood, womanhood, and everything in between, no one does it like Judy Blume. Like so many readers before me, I fell in love with Blume reading Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret as a girl, and was overjoyed to find her adult novels once I got older. In Summer Sisters, Blume’s emotional astuteness, comfortable language, and juicy storytelling translate beautifully into the world of adult topics. She covers things like sex and privilege with a masterful hand and perfectly captures the complexity of a friendship that spans multiple life stages. Vix’s story is complicated and deep—so is Caitlin’s, but the novel focuses mainly on Vix’s perspective—and I kept forgetting that she was a fictional character because of how unscripted her emotions feel in each moment. I flew through the book in a day, feeling as if I’d been given access to something private, like my mom’s diary of her youth. Filled with nostalgia and delicious descriptions of Martha’s Vineyard in the ‘70s and ‘80s, Summer Sisters is the perfect mixture of beach read and classic. I absolutely loved it.

I’d recommend this book to…

• Anyone curious about growing up in the ‘70s and youthful decisions that come back to haunt you… it’s similar in theme to Astonish Me by Maggie Shipstead
• Anyone who loves warm, readable stories that dig deep into relationships… it’s similar in style to Tom Lake by Ann Patchett
• Anyone looking for something nostalgic and redemptive… it’s similar in tone to Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano