B.F.F.

Following the instant New York Times bestseller and Reese's Book Club pick Group, B.F.F. is a delightfully funny, heartwarming, and deliciously voyeuristic memoir from Christie Tate about her lifelong struggle to form deep and lasting female friendships, and the friend who helps her discover the human connection she seeks.

After more than a decade of dead-end dates and dysfunctional relationships, Christie Tate has reclaimed her voice and found a loving man who doesn't drink. Her days of agonizing in group therapy over guys who won't commit are over, the grueling emotional work required to attach to another person tucked neatly into the past.

Or so she thought. Weeks into giddily sharing stories of her new boyfriend at Saturday morning recovery meetings, Christie receives a gift. Meredith, twenty years her senior and always impeccably accessorized, gives her a box of holiday-themed scarves as well as a gentle suggestion: maybe now is the perfect time to examine why friendships give her trouble. "The work never ends, right?" she says with a wink.

Christie isn't so sure, but she soon realizes that the feeling of "apartness" that has plagued her since childhood isn't magically going away now that she's in a healthy romantic relationship. With Meredith by her side, she embarks on a brutally honest exploration of her friendships past and present, sorting through how debilitating shame and jealousy keep the lasting bonds she craves out of reach - and how she can overcome a history of letting go too soon. When Meredith gets sick and Christie's baggage threatens to muddy their final days, she's forced to confront her deepest fears in honor of the woman who showed her how to be a friend.

From the hilarious, razor-sharp author behind the instant New York Times-bestseller Group, B.F.F. is a testament to the diner dates and desperate phone calls that make a friendship, and the ways one life - however messy and imperfect - can alter another.

Christie Tate is a Chicago-based writer and essayist. She has been published in The New York Times (Modern Love), The Rumpus, The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Eastern Iowa Review, and elsewhere. Kiese Laymon selected her essay "Promised Lands" as the winner of the New Ohio Review's 2019 nonfiction contest.