Nine novels with complex female friendships at their core

Sian Gilbert was born in Bristol, UK. She studied history at the University of Warwick, before teaching at a comprehensive school in Birmingham for almost five years. She now lives in Cambridge with her partner.

Gilbert's new novel is She Started It.

At CrimeReads she tagged nine "novels encapsulate many different facets of female friendship, both positive and negative: loyalty, mentorship, laughter; obsession, jealousy, anger; and everything in between." One title on the list:

How To Kill Your Best Friend by Lexie Elliott

An apt title, How To Kill Your Best Friend focuses on three female friends—Georgie, Bronwyn and Lissa—and the inevitable dynamic of who the closer pair are that always comes with a trio. When Lissa drowns off the coast near the luxury hotel she owns, Georgie and Bronwyn return to the area for her memorial service. An experienced swimmer, it’s obvious there is more to Lissa’s death than meets the eye. Every three chapters are interspersed with ‘How-To’ methods for killing your best friend: from a simple accident, to poison, to increasingly nefarious deeds, culminating in what really happened. The book exposes the comparisons that are so easily drawn in female friendships: the weighing up of each other’s lives to see who is winning, the regularity of jealousy, but also the dependency on one another and the vicious betrayal that comes with finding out a friend is not who you thought they were.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue