The Girls from Corona del Mar

The Girls from Corona del Mar is one of those rare books that breaks down the wall between reality and fiction; the entire time I read this book I ached as if it were my own best friend whose life was unraveling before me. Day and night I thought of her—I still think of her! Rufi Thorpe is a brilliant writer and this is a beautiful first book.

Vanessa Diffenbaugh, author of THE LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS

The Girls from Corona del Mar is unflinchingly realistic in its portrayal of life's twists and turns. Yet it's also full of heart. As Thorpe chronicles a complicated friendship across decades, continents and reversals in fortune, she brings to life two unforgettable characters.

J. Courtney Sullivan, author of MAINE and THE ENGAGEMENTS

Rufi Thorpe's open-hearted, open-eyed debut tells the engrossing story of a long friendship between two complex women and investigates the unpredictable, often baffling ways that luck shapes all of our lives. Generous, soulful, and tough.

Maggie Shipstead, bestselling author of SEATING ARRANGEMENTS

What’s most impressive is its incredible vitality, its searing intensity. Turn off your phone, close the blinds, and let it take you.

Ann Packer, author of THE DIVE FROM CLAUSEN’S PIER

Rufi Thorpe had me at the first line in her funny, sad, delightful debut novel, The Girls from Corona del Mar. A story about friendship, love, loss, and the sheer unexpectedness of life. Reading this book was like getting to know old friends; I was sorry when I turned the last page.

Anton DiSclafani, of THE YONAHLOSSEE RIDING CAMP FOR GIRLS

The Girls From Corona del Mar is a knockout of a debut novel . . . Her worldly, rambunctious, feminist, morally interrogative prose style galvanizes ­every episode with smart, almost cosmic insights, tough talk, elegiac moments of love, dumb wonder, and, of course, further tragic events.

Elle

It’s hard to believe [this] is Rufi Thorpe’s first novel — she writes like someone who has been through the wringer, like writers of the past who wrote because they needed to, because they had a problem with the way life was and had to tell someone. The Girls from Corona del Mar belongs in a different era, like something that could have been written during the days of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway.

Boston Herald

The Girls from Corona del Mar is a slim book that leaves a deep impression. Mia and Lorrie Ann are vivid and fully formed, and their stories provoke strong emotions that linger like lived memory. Thorpe is a gifted writer who depicts friendship with affection and brutality, rendering all its love and heartbreak in painstaking strokes.

Los Angeles Times

The Girls from Corona del Mar’s raw, lyrical tone resonates—a gratifyingly honest dispatch from the battle lines of young womanhood.

Entertainment Weekly

Observant, sometimes funny and continuously thought-provoking, the novel delves into the meaning of friendship, motherhood, freedom, truth and lies.

Daily Mail

This debut from Rufi Thorpe grips immediately, with the sharp compelling pressure of a friend grabbing your hand in pain … a brilliantly written, probing, uneasy look at a damaged friendship between two women.

Independent on Sunday

Her depiction of female friendship is engaging and sharply observed . . . Seldom has Schadenfreude been more appetisingly packaged.

New Statesman

It’s a superbly written novel, with a natural almost conversational tone that makes for an easy read despite the often hard-hitting subject matter … I simply couldn’t put it down. There’s a magnetic and moving quality to Thorpe’s writing that had me hooked from start to end. An absorbing story of female friendship in all its ugliness and beauty.

Culturefly

[A] gripping debut novel … Not just a coming-of-age novel, this refreshingly honest book explores the myth of the perfect friendship and what it really means to be a loyal friend.

Closer Magazine

Mia, the extremely intelligent narrator, will make you think about friendship, luck, and the way we see the lives of others though our own eyes. I loved it.

Evening Standard