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Verdict: An honest, character-first YA sequel about a first-year long-distance relationship that feels true to that age, undercut by a miscommunication engine that frustrates a large share of its readers.
Best for: Readers who loved Ruby and Morgan in Some Girls Do and want to see what happens after the love confession, and who can sit with two eighteen-year-olds making bad decisions for most of a book before they start making better ones.
Heat level: ★☆☆☆☆ (1/5 — closed door; a 12-and-up YA novel with no on-page sex)
Rating: ★★★★☆ (3.6/5 — a 3.81 Goodreads average across roughly 600 ratings, pulled down by the most repeated complaint in its reviews)
Tropes: Long-distance relationship, established couple, first year of college, miscommunication, jealousy and a flirtatious new friend, bisexual heroine, athlete heroine, dual POV, family healing, choosing a future.
Girls Like Us by Jennifer Dugan is the second and, for now, final book in the Some Girls Do series, a traditionally published young adult sapphic romance from G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers that follows Ruby and Morgan into the year after high school — Morgan running track on scholarship at a university hours away, Ruby staying home to study automotive engineering at the local community college, and the two of them discovering that loving each other and fitting into each other’s new lives are different problems.
It sits at 3.81 across roughly 600 Goodreads ratings, above the 3.69 that Some Girls Do holds across more than 31,000, and it arrived with positive notices from Kirkus, Booklist and School Library Journal. Most of them like it; a noticeable number spent the first half wanting to shake both leads. Both halves of that split are worth understanding before you start.
What Is Girls Like Us About?
Girls Like Us is a contemporary sapphic romance shelved as young adult, but it lives at the upper edge of that category: both leads are in their first year after school, and the concerns are college ones — scholarships, internships, schedules, new friends who have never met your girlfriend. It is a romance about maintenance rather than discovery, and it inherits a sports-romance backbone from book one through Morgan’s track career.
Ruby is the one who stayed. She has a real passion — cars, engines, the automotive program — and a family situation that book one left raw, and what she lacks is any confidence that she fits in Morgan’s new world. Morgan is the one who left, and she assumes the relationship will simply survive the distance because it survived everything else. The book alternates first-person chapters between them, which is what makes it work at all: you watch each girl misread the other in real time, and you understand exactly why.
What Makes This YA Sapphic Romance Work
- The long-distance realism: The most consistent praise in the reviews is that it captures the first year of college and a relationship under strain without romanticising either.
- Ruby: Readers name her first and most warmly. Her automotive ambitions get repeated praise, and her storyline with her mother and stepfather is the part Kirkus singled out as the most touching.
- Character growth by the end: On StoryGraph, 89% of reviewers say the characters develop strongly and 81% say their flaws are a main focus.
- A sequel that is actually a sequel: Booklist makes the point that YA rarely follows the same couple past the first confession, and readers who loved book one treat this as a gift.
- Dual POV that earns its keep: Both girls get full interiority, so neither becomes the villain — though a vocal minority decided Morgan was one anyway.
Book Synopsis
Almost a year after they got together in their senior year, Ruby and Morgan are living in two different places. Morgan has the track scholarship she always wanted and a public policy major at a university several hours away. Ruby is at home, taking automotive engineering classes at the community college and still working through what her family put her through. They call, they count down to visits, and the gaps between visits are getting harder to fill.
Both of them are building lives the other can only see in pieces. Morgan has teammates and classmates, and one new friend in particular who seems very comfortable flirting with her. Ruby has her own new circle and her own admirer. Neither is doing anything unforgivable, exactly, but each keeps things back, and each notices when the other does too. The plan that holds them together is simple: a spring break trip to Washington, D.C., and then a whole summer in the same place.
Then the futures start arriving. Morgan becomes a finalist for an internship that could shape the rest of her career. Ruby gets a chance to appear on the automotive television show she has loved for years. Both opportunities collide with the trip and with the summer, and neither girl is willing to be the reason the other one says no. The question the book turns on is whether two people who refuse to hold each other back can still find a way to stay together.
My Review
The thing Dugan gets right here, and gets right more convincingly than most YA romances attempt, is the texture of being eighteen and in love with someone who is now four hours away. The countdowns, the calls that go wrong because both people are tired, the resentment you know is unfair and feel anyway — it is all specific and recognisable. The emotional register is quieter than book one’s, closer to melancholy than rom-com, and StoryGraph readers tag it “emotional” at 85%, well above any other mood.
Ruby is the second real strength. A bisexual girl who loves engines, whose ambitions are working-class and practical in a book where her girlfriend’s are prestigious and institutional, gives the relationship an asymmetry that feels earned rather than engineered. Her family thread — the healing after what book one put her through — gives the book weight beyond the romance.
Where it struggles is the engine that drives the plot, and this is not my private gripe. Of the roughly forty Goodreads reviews I read, around eight single out the miscommunication as the problem, in the same exasperated terms: they are young, fine, but talk to each other. Around that sits the emotional-infidelity question — at least four readers describe Morgan’s closeness to a flirtatious new friend as crossing a line, and one reader stopped at 43% over it. A smaller group go further and say the two leads are simply bad for each other. The book resolves toward growth, but several readers say it took too long to get there, and one felt the ending was rushed.
One expectation to reset: the cover and the series name suggest a fizzy sapphic romance, and it is not that. There is no falling-in-love arc, because they are already together, and there is no heat at all. What it delivers is a relationship drama with a romance’s ending. If the fizz is what you came for, calibrate; if you want an honest look at what first love costs once real life starts, this is exactly that book.
My honest note: A thoughtful, well-observed sequel that asks readers to tolerate a lot of avoidable hurt before it pays off. If miscommunication plots make you want to throw the book, this will test you. If you loved Ruby and Morgan and want to see them grow up, it rewards the patience.
| Element | In Girls Like Us |
|---|---|
| Central relationship | Ruby & Morgan — bisexual would-be mechanic and track-scholarship athlete, an established couple going long distance |
| Core tropes | Long-distance relationship, established couple, first year of college, miscommunication, jealousy, dual POV |
| Setting | Ruby’s hometown community college and Morgan’s university several hours away, with a planned spring break in Washington, D.C. |
| Heat level | 1/5 — closed door, no on-page sex |
| Series | Some Girls Do book 2 — follows Some Girls Do (2021); no third book announced |
| Content notes | Emotional infidelity, a strained and at times toxic relationship, biphobia, bullying, addiction, and references to domestic and emotional abuse |
How Spicy Is Girls Like Us?
A 1/5, and that is a description rather than a criticism. romance.io does index the book, but with only a handful of ratings and no steam level assigned, so the number comes from the publisher’s 12-and-up age range and from what readers report is on the page. One reviewer puts it plainly: no spice, not much suggestiveness, not even a fade-to-black build-up — and as an adult reader of a book about college girls, she expected slightly more.
The element worth knowing about in advance is emotional rather than physical: the jealousy and near-cheating storyline around Morgan’s new friend, which is the thing that makes some readers stop. No reviewer I found flags anything explicit. If you want other closed-door sapphic YA at the same heat, She Drives Me Crazy and You Don’t Have a Shot sit in the same band.
Who Should Read This Book?
You’ll likely love it if: you read Some Girls Do and still think about Ruby and Morgan, you want a romance about staying together rather than getting together, you like character-driven stories where flawed people grow, and you are happy with a closed-door book.
You may want to skip it if: miscommunication as a plot device makes you furious, emotional cheating is a hard line for you, you want the falling-in-love part of a romance, or you are an adult reader hoping college means more heat.
In short: a true-to-life portrait of first love under strain, delivered through a conflict that half its readers find realistic and the other half find maddening.
What Readers Are Actually Saying (September 2026)
This is a sequel with a very large shadow. The publisher’s own author bio says Some Girls Do took TikTok by storm, and it has more than 31,000 Goodreads ratings to show for it; Girls Like Us, four and a half months after release, has around 600. What surrounds the sequel is the traditional YA machine rather than an organic moment: NetGalley advance copies account for many early reviews, three trade outlets covered it, and a German edition followed. I could not check Reddit or TikTok directly for this review, so I cannot say whether a discussion is happening there; what is clear is that many Goodreads reviewers found book one years ago and came back out of nostalgia. On Amazon it holds 4.5 stars across 77 ratings, the usual Amazon generosity.
The audiobook is part of the story. Listening Library released it with two narrators, Bailey Carr and Nora Hunter, running 9 hours 27 minutes, and the one listener review I found praises both voices and the production quality.
Prefer audio? Listen to Girls Like Us on Libro.fm — the audiobook shop that supports independent bookstores.
Why readers love it (according to the discourse): The realism, first and most consistently — readers keep saying long distance is hard, college is hard, becoming an adult is hard, and that the book gets that right. Then the growth: even critical reviewers concede the characters end the book in a better place than they started it. Ruby is the favourite by a distance, and the automotive thread is praised even in reviews that rate the book three stars. A minority — worth noting — liked this one more than the first.
What readers argue about and complain about: Miscommunication, above everything. It is the single most repeated criticism in the reviews, and it comes from four- and five-star readers as well as two-star ones. The emotional-cheating storyline is the second theme — one reader calls Morgan jealous and needy while flirting constantly with her new friend, another says outright that one girl is emotionally cheating and stopped reading. Third: sequel fatigue. Several readers say the first book was better because it had the falling-in-love, and one wishes this had been a novella. Opinions divide on whether Ruby and Morgan should be together at all; a few reviewers wanted them to break up, while others would happily read five more books about them. The trade reviews — Kirkus calling it sweet and healing, Booklist praising the banter, School Library Journal noting the self-doubt, resentment and jealousy of that age — do not treat the miscommunication as a flaw at all, which is the gap between the professional and reader verdicts here.
The series question everyone should ask first: this is book two, and Amazon lists the series as two books. Readers say it can be read without book one — you pick up enough to follow — but several found references to earlier events confusing and recommend reading Some Girls Do first, ideally close together. Reviewers report that the couple ends the book in a better, steadier place rather than on a cliffhanger, and more than one is openly asking for a third book. None has been announced. If you want more Dugan afterwards, our review of her Anderson in Bloom is the place to start.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do you need to read Some Girls Do before Girls Like Us?
Not strictly, but it helps. Readers who skipped book one say they could follow the story, while others found references to past events confusing. Reading them close together is the common recommendation.
How spicy is Girls Like Us?
A 1/5. It is a closed-door young adult novel with a 12-and-up reading age, and readers report no sex scenes and not even a fade-to-black build-up.
Does Girls Like Us end on a cliffhanger?
No. Reviewers report that Ruby and Morgan work through their problems and end the book in a better place, though at least one reader felt the ending was rushed.
Is there going to be a third Some Girls Do book?
Not that has been announced. Amazon lists the series as two books, and several readers are openly asking for a third.
Is there an audiobook of Girls Like Us?
Yes. Listening Library published it with two narrators, Bailey Carr and Nora Hunter, and it runs 9 hours 27 minutes.
If You Loved Girls Like Us, Read These Next
For the same first-year-of-college setting with more fizz and less angst, She Gets the Girl is the closest match on the site, also told in dual POV. If Morgan’s track career was the draw, Home Field Advantage puts a sapphic YA romance inside high-school sport. And for a closed-door YA romance where two girls who seem wrong for each other slowly prove otherwise, She Drives Me Crazy is the natural next read.
For more in this register, browse our lesbian YA books guide, the sapphic sports romance list, or the full Book Reviews collection.
The Bottom Line
Girls Like Us is a sequel with a real ambition: to follow a YA couple past the happy ending and into the year that tests it. The long-distance strain is observed with real precision, Ruby is a heroine worth the return trip, and the growth at the end is earned. It is also built on a miscommunication plot that frustrates a large share of its readers, an emotional-cheating thread that is a dealbreaker for some, and a closed-door approach that will leave adult readers of a college-age romance wanting more. Whether that trade is worth it depends on how much you love these two already — for fans of book one, it mostly is. Check Girls Like Us on Amazon →
The Eikna Overall Ranking
On the Eikna scale, Girls Like Us ranks as a quietly honest traditionally published YA sapphic sequel — true to first-year long distance and generous with character growth, held back by a miscommunication engine, and best approached for Ruby and the relationship’s maturing rather than for romance fizz.
The Evidence Scorecard
Overall ★★★★☆ 3.6/5
- ✓ 3.81 average across roughly 600 Goodreads ratings
- ✓ Kirkus, Booklist and SLJ all positive
- ✓ Only 3% did-not-finish on StoryGraph
- ✓ Miscommunication is the dominant reader complaint
Romance ★★★☆☆ 3.4/5
- ✓ Rare YA look past the first confession
- ✓ Long-distance strain feels real
- ✓ Readers still root for the couple
- ✓ Emotional cheating thread loses some readers
Characters ★★★★☆ 4/5
- ✓ 89% on StoryGraph say strong development
- ✓ Ruby is the clear reader favourite
- ✓ Family thread Kirkus calls touching
- ✓ Morgan divides readers sharply
Writing ★★★★☆ 3.8/5
- ✓ Alternating first-person chapters used well
- ✓ Booklist singles out the banter
- ✓ Readers praise Dugan’s style even when critical
- ✓ Conflict leans on avoidable silences
Emotional Impact ★★★★☆ 3.9/5
- ✓ 85% of StoryGraph reviewers tag it emotional
- ✓ Book-one fans describe real heartbreak
- ✓ Ruby’s healing gives it weight
- ✓ Frustration blunts the hurt for some
Heat Level ★☆☆☆☆ 1/5
- ✓ Closed door, 12-and-up YA
- ✓ No steam level assigned on romance.io
- ✓ Readers report not even fade-to-black
- ✓ Adult readers expected slightly more
Ending ★★★★☆ 3.5/5
- ✓ No cliffhanger reported
- ✓ Growth lands for both leads
- ✓ Readers openly asking for book three
- ✓ Resolution called slow, then rushed
Re-read Value ★★★☆☆ 3.4/5
- ✓ Nostalgia pull for book-one fans
- ✓ Dual-narrator audiobook as a second pass
- ✓ Best read back to back with book one
- ✓ The frustrating middle discourages a return
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