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A sharply observed, deeply nostalgic coming-of-age story set against the indie music scene of the early 2000s.

Sexual assault and harassment.

It’s 2005, and Susan is barreling down the Long Island Expressway driving a car full of friends to an indie rock show. Eliza is a surprise addition in the backseat—unexpected, out of place, and impossible to ignore. Their connection is immediate, electric, and complicated from the start, shadowed by the kind of small-town rumors that have a way of sticking. As quickly as they come together, they part.

As Susan moves from Long Island to Brooklyn, from college to the insular world of indie labels, she begins to carve out a life in music, and the future she always dreamed of. Yet the scene that once felt like home reveals its limits, forcing her to confront who gets to belong, who gets to create, and what it costs to stay.

When Susan and Eliza reconnect years later, the pull between them hasn’t faded—but neither have the unresolved histories that first drove them apart. As past and present collide, Susan is caught between two worlds—where she’s from, and where she’s trying to go.

Moving between the raw intensity of youth and the clarity of hindsight, Long Island Girls captures the ache of growing up, the messiness and joy of queer identity, and the way music, memory, and desire shape who we become.

Don't just take our word for it...

“A breathtaking and entirely relatable coming-of-age novel… For lovers of music, romance, and perhaps some indie sleaze, this is a time capsule for first love.”
– Harper’s Bazaar, Most Anticipated Books of 2026

“As much about friendship, self-knowledge, and coming of age as it is about young love. (Fellow millennials: you will also absolutely eat up the nostalgia factor in this one.)”
– Them, Most Anticipated LGBTQ+ Books of 2026

“Korn channels the angst of the early 2000s indie music scene in this effective appeal to millennial nostalgia… Tender… a clear-eyed gaze into the messiness of youth.”
– Publishers Weekly

Taste the very first page

Susan puts a salty, slightly stale Sunchip in her mouth, and the moment she bites down on it, Katie says, “I love you, but you’re the loudest chewer in the entire world.”

Susan’s sitting cross-legged on the carpeted floor of Katie’s bedroom with her back against the bed as she flips through the newest edition of SPIN magazine, already the September issue even though it’s still August. It’s three weeks before their senior year of high school, smack in the middle of suburban Long Island, land of strip malls.

Behind her, Katie is lying on her stomach atop the tightly made bed, painting her nails with Hard Candy polish, a navy blue. Katie’s room has been cleaned by someone else; even the CDs are dusted. It smells like fresh laundry and brown- sugar lotion from their town’s newly opened Sephora.

“Do you want me to just suck on it?” Susan says, with her mouth full.

Katie snorts. “Yeah, could you?”

Katie blows on her nails and her breath catches the back of Susan’s neck. Susan shivers and puts her hood up. It’s ninety degrees out and so humid the air has a texture to it, but inside, the AC is blasting hard enough that Susan has goose bumps beneath her black sweatshirt.

Death Cab for Cutie poses on the cover of the magazine in her lap, the baby-faced lead singer clutching a bloody heart like a sacrificial offering to some discerning deity of alternative music. The image is a little too on the nose for Susan, more cloying than cool. Now that they’ve gotten so big, the band no longer sounds like a tender secret between her and her headphones. It is hard for her to reckon with the idea that music can be both popular and good. Still, she loves SPIN in a way that verges on obsession, and she plans on reading every word, cover to cover, the mainstreaming of Death Cab be damned.

She puts another chip in her mouth, feeling self-conscious as she gently crunches down on it.

“Better?”

“No.” Katie laughs.

July 2026