Growing Pains

Thompson explores the evolution of friendship across space and time.

As undergrads at Hawthorne University, Lily, Ana, and Margot shared everything: clothes, mascara, secrets, lives. Now approaching 30 and strewn across the country, they and their lives couldn’t look more different, and secrets are easier to keep. In her debut novel, Girls Our Age, Phoebe Thompson MFA’24 explores the evolution of friendship across time and space.

To her friends, family, and fiancé, Lily has always been perfect. To Lily, perfection is a standard she must meet at all costs. With her wedding on the horizon and her schedule filling up with people to please, she struggles against old demons to maintain her fragile façade. Across the country, Ana tries desperately to feel at home in the dazzling apartment and private-school teaching job that mark the beginning of her and boyfriend Silas’s life together. Meanwhile, Margot has her sights set on a big promotion when her unchecked ambition leads to a fall from grace that coincides with a personal reckoning. As Lily’s wedding creates occasions for the three friends to reconvene, their disparate lives and the details they’ve kept from each other underscore friction where once there was ease.

According to Thompson, the idea for the novel was born of her own experiences in her 20s reconnecting with college friends at weddings. “We had known each other for so long prior to meeting our significant others, and suddenly we were all spread out and our dynamics were changing,” she says. “Now you all live in different places and have primary partners. Your friends are not your first priority anymore.”

Goodreads listed Girls Our Age among its most-anticipated literary fiction for 2026. Thompson is the founder of the marketing consultancy Extra Cred.

Published in the Summer 2026 issue