Seven notable sets of frenemies in film & fiction

Jody Gehrman is a native of Northern California, where she can be found writing, teaching, reading, or obsessing over her three cats most days. She is also the author of numerous award-winning plays and novels, including The Girls Weekend.

[Writers Read: Jody Gehrman; The Page 69 Test: Watch Me; My Book, The Movie: Watch Me]

Gehrman's new novel is The Summer We Buried.

Her Young Adult novel Babe in Boyland was optioned by the Disney Channel and won the International Reading Association's Teen Choice Award.

Gehrman's plays have been produced in Ashland, New York, San Francisco, Chicago and L.A. She and her partner David Wolf won the New Generation Playwrights Award for their one-act, Jake Savage, Jungle P.I.

At CrimeReads, Gehrman tagged seven favorite "books and films that illustrate why frenemies are here to stay," including:

Single White Female by John Lutz

The 1990 novel that spawned the iconic film starring Bridget Fonda and Jennifer Jason Leigh still resonates today. When I aspired to dress like my fashionista friend, her girlfriend jokingly accused me of “single white female-ing her,” proof that this tale of unstable female friendship still has a place in our popular imagination.

If you haven’t read the book or seen the movie, they’re both worth your time, even if just for their kitsch value in pop culture history. The spirit of the early nineties and its ham-fisted forays into third wave feminism is alive and well in both, imbuing them with a flavor that alternates between cringey and compelling.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue