Long Island Girls Review — Is It Worth Reading?

Updated on October 5, 2026

Verdict: A sharp, nostalgic literary coming-of-age novel about a twenty-year fixation on one girl and one music scene, held back by a protagonist many readers find hard to love and a book that reaches for more themes than it can hold.

Best for: Readers who want literary queer fiction with a strong sense of place and era, who find obsession and limerence more interesting than a tidy romance arc, and who can forgive a heroine who is often her own worst enemy.

Heat level: ★★★☆☆ (3/5 — on-page sex scenes inside a literary novel, per Kirkus and reader reports)

Rating: ★★★★☆ (3.5/5 — a 3.78 Goodreads average across 1,708 ratings, a warm Kirkus review, and a recurring complaint that it goes wide instead of deep)

Tropes: First love, obsession and limerence, coming of age, coming out, second chance, music scene, millennial nostalgia, mentor figure, episodic time jumps, standalone.

Long Island Girls by Gabrielle Korn is a standalone literary, character-driven queer novel from St. Martin’s, published June 23, 2026 — a coming-of-age story that follows Susan Goldstein from a 2005 indie rock show on Long Island through twenty years of Brooklyn music-industry life, and the collision at its centre is between Susan and Eliza Klein, the girl she meets at seventeen and never quite stops orbiting.

Three months after release it holds a 3.78 average across 1,708 Goodreads ratings, a 3.95 on StoryGraph across 265 reviews with a low 3% did-not-finish rate, and an entirely positive (unstarred) Kirkus review that floats the idea it could be the perfect lesbian romance novel. Readers are cooler and more divided than that line suggests, and for reasons the trade review never mentions. Both halves of that split are worth understanding before you start.

What Is Long Island Girls About?

This is literary fiction first and a love story second, and it is worth being precise about that. It sits on the shelf beside contemporary lesbian romance because the emotional spine is one woman’s feelings for another, but the structure is a life, not a courtship. Kirkus describes six interconnected sections running from 2005 to 2025, and the book moves through them like a photo album: suburban teenagehood, the Brooklyn indie-label years, the industry’s slow slide into sponsored content, layoffs, and the #MeToo reckoning that reaches Susan’s scene.

Susan is defined at the start by what she does not yet have: a word for who she is, a place in the scene she worships, and Eliza. Eliza is defined by what Susan assumes about her, and much of the book is Susan slowly learning that the girl in her head and the woman in front of her are not the same person. The story stays close to Susan throughout. That gives the obsession its intensity, and it is also the source of the book’s biggest problem, because a reader who does not warm to Susan has nowhere else to stand.

What Makes This Sapphic Coming-of-Age Novel Work

The nostalgia: The early-2000s indie scene is the most-praised element by a distance. Reviewers who lived through it call it uncannily specific, and “indie sleaze” is the phrase that keeps turning up in five-star reviews.
The pining: Susan’s fixation on Eliza is what the highest ratings are about. One StoryGraph reader says it “absolutely destroyed me”, and others single out how honestly the book shows yearning curdling into projection.
The episodic structure: The jumps between eras let the book show a person changing over two decades. Several readers praise it, and it is why the later sections land harder than the early ones.
Something to say about the industry: The record-label storyline, from scene idealism to sponsored content and layoffs, gives the book a second subject.
The sex on the page: Kirkus singles it out, saying Korn writes lesbian sex scenes as few others dare. It gives the relationship a physical reality.

Book Synopsis

In 2005, Susan Goldstein is seventeen, stuck in the Long Island suburbs, and certain that real life is happening somewhere else — probably on a stage in a sweaty club. On the drive to an indie rock show with her best friend Katie, she meets the people who will shape the next twenty years: Jonny Lakes, a musician who takes her under his wing, and Eliza Klein, a girl who arrives trailing rumours and who Susan cannot stop looking at. What happens between them is fast, confusing and electric, and it ends almost as soon as it begins.

Susan does what ambitious suburban kids do. She leaves. Brooklyn, college and a job at an independent record label give her the life she dreamed about from the back of a car. But the industry is changing underneath her, the people she idolised are not who she thought, and the question of who gets to belong in a scene that claims to welcome everyone starts to apply to her too.

Through all of it, Eliza keeps coming back — in memory, in rumour, and now and then in person. Each reunion pulls Susan back into the version of herself that was seventeen and in love, and each one leaves her a little less sure whether she loves Eliza or the story she has built around her. The question that drives the rest of the book is whether two women who met as teenagers can ever see each other clearly, or whether some first loves are only ever a projection.

My Review

The premise is excellent, and the setting is better. A queer coming-of-age novel that refuses to end at eighteen, following one woman through twenty years of a music scene as it gets bought, branded and gutted, is a story with real shape. The early-2000s detail is the reason most five-star readers loved it, and it gives the romance a backdrop that means something.

The second real strength is how honestly the book treats obsession. Susan’s feelings for Eliza are not a sweet slow burn; they are limerence, and the novel knows it. The best reviews understand this — one reader describes it as loving someone who is really a projection of your own wants — and the later sections, where Susan has to set the fantasy against the real woman, are where the book earns its emotional weight.

Where it struggles is Susan herself, and this is the dominant complaint in the reviews, not a personal gripe. A large share of the critical readers find her immature, self-absorbed or simply thin, and at least one asks why the book is not about Eliza instead. Stacked on top is a pacing problem: several readers say the first half drags and the second half is where it comes alive, while others feel key moments get glossed over in the time jumps. Then there is breadth. The book takes on gentrification, industry exploitation, #MeToo, queer politics and more, and a recurring criticism is that it touches all of them without going deep on any.

There is also an expectation to reset. The cover and the marketing invite romance readers, and Kirkus calls it a possible perfect lesbian romance novel. The love story is the spine, but it shares the book with a career, friendships and two decades of other women. If a romance arc is what drew you, calibrate. If you wanted a literary novel about growing up queer with a love story running through it, this is exactly that.

My honest note: A vivid, specific portrait of a generation and a scene, with an obsession at its heart that is more interesting than most fictional romances. If you need to like your narrator, it will test you; if you can live inside someone else’s fixation for three hundred pages, it pays off.

Element	In Long Island Girls
Central relationship	Susan Goldstein & Eliza Klein — first love at seventeen, a fixation that runs through twenty years
Core tropes	First love, obsession and limerence, coming of age, coming out, second chance, music scene
Setting	Long Island and Brooklyn’s indie-label world, 2005 to 2025
Heat level	3/5 — on-page sex scenes within a literary novel
Series	Standalone literary novel
Content notes	Sexual assault and harassment (flagged as graphic on StoryGraph), lesbophobia, slut-shaming, industry exploitation and #MeToo-era abuse, a late storyline touching on Israel that some readers object to

How Spicy Is Long Island Girls?

It is open door, though not in the way a genre romance is. Its romance.io page has only eight reader ratings and no steam rating yet, which is itself a signal: the book is being read as literary fiction, not adult romance. The evidence for the heat comes from Kirkus, which says Korn writes lesbian sex scenes as few others dare and names the sex as one reason the book works, and from readers who mention the intimate scenes without suggesting they dominate. Across twenty years and several relationships, the sex is part of Susan’s life rather than the engine of the plot, which is why 3/5 is the honest number.

The thing worth knowing in advance is not the sex but the darkness around the music scene. StoryGraph’s crowd-sourced warnings flag sexual assault and harassment as graphic, and the #MeToo thread is part of the story, not background. No reviewer I found flags anything beyond that. If you want literary sapphic fiction at similar heat, Perfume & Pain sits at a 3/5 with an even pricklier narrator, and Big Swiss is another frank, messy novel about obsession.

Who Should Read This Book?

You’ll likely love it if: you read literary fiction for character and atmosphere rather than plot, the early-2000s indie scene is your youth or your fascination, you are interested in obsession and first love as something that shapes a whole life, and you like books that follow a person across decades.

You may want to skip it if: you need a likeable narrator to stay invested, you want a romance with a clear arc and a guaranteed couple, you prefer a book that goes deep on one theme rather than touching many, or a late, politically charged storyline would sour a book for you.

In short: a vivid generational portrait with a real ache in it, for readers who can share a book with a difficult heroine.

What Readers Are Actually Saying (October 2026)

There is no viral moment behind this book. Its readership is what a St. Martin’s literary release by a known name gets: a steady build since June to 1,708 Goodreads ratings and 265 StoryGraph reviews, a Kirkus review, and a place on our list of the best sapphic romances of 2026. It also made our Top Ten Tuesday list of sapphic covers that take the story seriously, which matters here because the packaging is honest about the book’s literary register. The audiobook, narrated by Bailey Carr and running 10 hours 15 minutes, has only a handful of Audible ratings, but at least one StoryGraph reviewer singles out the narration for praise.

Prefer audio? Listen to Long Island Girls on Libro.fm — the audiobook shop that supports independent bookstores.

Why readers love it (according to the discourse): The nostalgia, first and by a distance. “Indie sleaze” and “early-2000s” recur in the five-star reviews, and readers who were there say it gets the details right. Second, the pining: readers who connect with Susan’s fixation describe it as devastating, and the more thoughtful reviews praise the way the book exposes first love as projection. Third, the structure, with the episodic jumps letting readers watch Susan grow up. A notable minority defends the very thing others criticise: one four-star reviewer says the characters are not likeable, and that is exactly what makes them feel real.

What readers argue about and complain about: Susan, above everything. The single most repeated criticism is that the protagonist is immature, one-dimensional or hard to care about, and that the book never fully lets you see past her. Second: breadth over depth. Multiple reviewers say the novel starts strong and then tries to cover too many issues without sitting with any of them, and several call it surface-level. Third, and specific to this book: a late storyline involving Israel. At least six of the roughly fifty StoryGraph reviews I read object to it, describing it as a lukewarm or pro-Israel take that arrives late and feels out of place; one says it nearly made them stop reading. The genuine split is the relationship: some find Susan and Eliza messy in a believable way, others find them underdeveloped. Kirkus mentions none of this, which is exactly the kind of gap between trade and reader reviews worth knowing about.

The standalone question worth asking first: It is a complete standalone with no sequel planned that I could find, and it does not end on a cliffhanger; Kirkus calls the resolution unexpected and satisfying. It is also a departure for Korn, whose previous novel was dystopian fiction, so readers coming from that book should expect something very different. If you want the same first-love-in-a-specific-place ache with more romance, Sunburn holds a 4.24 Goodreads average across about 99,700 ratings and is the stronger-rated book in this lane.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Long Island Girls a romance or literary fiction?

Literary fiction. The love between Susan and Eliza is the emotional spine, but the book follows Susan’s whole life from 2005 to 2025, including her career, friendships and other relationships, rather than a romance arc.

How spicy is Long Island Girls?

A 3/5. It has on-page sex scenes, which Kirkus singles out, but they are part of a literary novel rather than its focus. Its romance.io page has no steam rating yet.

Does Long Island Girls have a happy ending?

It has a resolved ending that Kirkus calls unexpected and satisfying, and it does not end on a cliffhanger. It is not built like a genre romance, so do not go in expecting a conventional happily-ever-after structure.

Is Long Island Girls a standalone?

Yes. It is a complete standalone novel with no series attached, and you do not need to have read Gabrielle Korn’s earlier books.

Is there an audiobook of Long Island Girls?

Yes. It is narrated by Bailey Carr and runs 10 hours 15 minutes. At least one reader praises the narration specifically.

What are the content warnings for Long Island Girls?

StoryGraph readers flag sexual assault and harassment as graphic, plus lesbophobia. Readers also mention slut-shaming and #MeToo-era abuse in the music industry.

If You Loved Long Island Girls, Read These Next

If it was the first love tied to one place and one era that worked for you, Sunburn runs the same ache in 1990s Ireland with more focus on the girls themselves. For a coming-of-age where finding the scene is finding yourself, Last Night at the Telegraph Club is the classic, and our sapphic coming-of-age reads list includes this book too. For an adult reunion with more romance and less career, try Anderson in Bloom. For more, browse our sapphic second chance romance hub, the Second Chance Romance category, or the full Book Reviews archive.

The Bottom Line

Long Island Girls wants to be the story of a generation of queer women growing up inside a music scene that sold itself out, and of one fixation that outlasts it all. The nostalgia is vivid, the obsession is honestly drawn, and the episodic structure lets the later chapters land. But Susan is hard to love, the book spreads itself across more issues than it can explore, and a late political storyline has put off a noticeable share of readers. It is worth it for readers who love literary queer fiction and can sit with a difficult narrator. Check Long Island Girls on Amazon →

The Eikna Overall Ranking

On the Eikna scale, Long Island Girls ranks as a traditionally published literary queer coming-of-age novel — rich in era detail and honest about obsession, held back by a divisive narrator and too many themes, and best approached as a portrait of a fixation rather than as a romance.