I feel lucky to live in a time when strong female friendships in entertainment rule, especially ones about BFFs in their late 20s. It just so happens Maura and I are currently are in that bracket too, and being that we run this site together and are close friends, we can’t help but keep each other posted whenever we come across great stories of female bonds.

As in Frances Ha, which captures a very specific “Saturn returns” time period of two 27-year olds, and Broad City‘s insanely funny cracked-out adventures of best GF’s living in NYC, Emily Gould’s first novel, aptly titled Friendship, similarly explores the lives of two ladybuds navigating through one emotional, seemingly neverending, rollercoaster ride.

In Friendship, 30-year old gal pals Bev and Amy have unknowingly become too ripe too soon. The thick skins they think they have begin to peel back quickly, and they’re both about to get really fucked in different ways. Bev is a lost soul who has returned to NYC after prematurely moving away for a long-term relationship that ended. Amy begins to feel the crippling effects of difficult city life when she eventually loses everything that’s been handed to her thus far. One of them also gets preggers. They need each other for support, but now is really not a good time for either of them. What happens when your best friend can’t be there for you, even when she’s all you have left? What is it about age 30 that makes it difficult to keep the same kind of friends that you’ve had since your early 20s?

Luckily for Maura and me, we’ve got one good year left before we both hit 30, and I can only hope that shit doesn’t hit the fan for either of us, unlike the way it does for Emily Gould’s heroines. In many ways, Friendship aims to be an epic love story between two people whom I can only describe as hetero life partners. And though their limits are pushed and bonds are severely challenged, if a broken friendship in fiction can eventually mend itself, I think we’re all in good shape for real-life growing up, too.