Book #29 – Girl Squads: 20 Female Friendships that Changed History

Prompt – A book with ’20’ or ‘twenty’ in the title.

Medium – Book

About the Book: Written by Sam Maggs, this book tells the stories of 20 groups of female friends, whose friendships can be #squadgoals and who changed history through working together. The book includes different ‘squads’ – warriors, athletes, scientists, political and artists – who have different specialisms but who also show the benefits of working together as women. The author writes about the importance of female friendship and how this can bring benefits to everyone. The book is also full of original illustrations, which are beautiful and show the women involved within their respective fields.

My Rating – 7.5/10. There were elements of this book that I really enjoyed, and those that I found myself skipping through. I think that this is the issue with books which cover quite a broad spectrum and anthologise stories – there will always be ones that you prefer and ones you don’t. I did like the author’s style of writing – she is very informal, with lots of humorous asides in italics and sarcastic comments about male leadership. I also liked the general premise of the book – I believe wholeheartedly that it is massively important to have good female friends to offer support and help work through shared issues. It is lovely to see actual real life friendships in a book, rather than stories where the females are at each other’s throats or don’t like each other very much.

Here are some of my favourites:

1. Madison Keys and Sloane Stephens – they are tennis players who played against each other in the US Open but are also really good friends in real life. I found the description of the end of the US Open Final’s match really touching.
2. Manon Roland and Sophie Grandchamp – these were two women active during the French Revolution, who tried to rein in the despotic nature of men like Robespierre.
3. The Ladies of the US Supreme Court – who are just complete badasses. I loved the description of their friendship and how they work together.
4. The Red Lanterns – Chinese female fighters who fought in the Boxer Rebellion, were brought in to finish fights that the male fighters couldn’t and who were trained in martial arts.
5. The Edinburgh Seven – the first seven women who were medical students in the UK. Their resilience and friendship in the face of so much misogyny is just awe-inspiring.

Would I read it again? Probably not – but it is the sort of book I might re-gift to a friend or younger female relative.