Dream Girls

Helena and Ruthie have been best friends since high school, where they bonded over Wuthering Heights, Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet and photographs of Joseph Stalin when he was young and hot. They dreamed of getting a sharehouse in the city and living adult lives of great passion, art and romance.

But as they drift into their late twenties, they are forced to contend with the idea that growing up might mean growing apart. Helena is pining for her ex-boyfriend while working at an elite boys' school rife with sexual harassment and oil paintings of ships. Meanwhile, Ruthie is pouring her marital despair into three-tiered funfetti cakes, seeking refuge from her family in solo Friday-night trips to Woolworths.

When an old school friend invites Helena and Ruthie to a glamorous forest wedding, they jump at the chance to reconnect. But finding their way back to each other, past unrealised dreams and younger selves, isn't as easy as they thought. Inspired by Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Dream Girls is a novel about love and friendship in absurd times.

Dream Girls is a compelling and deep interrogation of intense female friendship. Goldstein writes with intelligence and verve, and with a forensically nuanced understanding of the sometimes-thin line between resentment and love. Interrogating pathos and pop culture, loneliness and desire, this novel has a moreish quality - I gobbled it up.' Madeleine Gray

'Jane Austen hits suburbia - Dream Girls is a sparkling anti-romance for our times.' Briohny Doyle

'Dream Girls completely charmed me. I laughed (and cringed!) and loved these characters. How wonderful to read a novel that is unapologetically for and about women and the fierceness of our friendships.' Emma Darragh

'Ingenious, delectable, compelling and very funny; the broken and (almost) unbearably flawed characters are like the perfect antidote to the slick young twenty-somethings of Sally Rooney. I loved Ruthie from the start and was urgently invested in Helen(a)'s evolution and redemption. And Shakespeare and Taylor Swift provide a perfect framework.' Jaclyn Moriarty

'Dream Girls is a beguiling triumph that made me want to pull all my girlfriends - and past versions of myself - into a big bear hug. This is for every woman who suspects - rightly so - that her girlfriends are the true loves of her life.' Naïma Brown

'Dream Girls is a novel about love and limerence, friendship and fantasy, and what happens when we mistake donkeys for angels. Hannah Goldstein spins a shimmering and timeless story firmly anchored in the present day. A deviously delightful debut.' Eleanor Limprecht

'A funny, yet deeply heartfelt, ode to female friendship. Dream Girls is a story told so richly it will make you feel nostalgic for an adolescence you never had.' Amy Taylor

'Painfully astute and laugh-out-loud funny - Goldstein paints modern girlhood in all its ugly glory. I need everyone to read this so I can talk about it forever.' Eleanor Kirk