Ten top female friendships in YA

Sara Barnard is the author of Beautiful Broken Things, which features friends Caddy, Rosie and Suzanne. One of her top ten female friendships in YA literature, as shared at the Guardian:

Maddie and Queenie in Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein

Maddie and Queenie are from two completely different worlds, but they’re thrown together by the second world war. One a Northern pilot, the other an aristocratic spy, the two women form a fierce friendship in the midst of war. There’s a lot going on in this novel – all of it brilliant – but the central relationship between Maddie and Queenie is what sustains the novel and also what stays with the reader at the end. You just love these women, and you love their friendship. Because it’s a dual narrative book, you see each of them from the other’s point of view, and it is perhaps this unique element that makes them so, overwhelmingly, real. And maybe has something to do with the DEEP GUTTURAL SOBS that are brought on by THAT ending.

Read about another entry on the list.

Code Name Verity also appears on Kelly Anderson's list of seven awesome books that celebrate female friendship, Natalie Zutter's top seven list of YA books where friendship trumps romance, Arwen Elys Dayton's top five list od books about false identities, Melissa Albert's top five list of YA books that might make one cry, Sara Brady's list of six of the best spies in romance, Lenore Appelhans's top ten list of teen books featuring flashbacks and Lydia Syson's list of ten of the best historical novels for young readers.

Writers Read: Elizabeth Wein (May 2015).

--Marshal Zeringue