coming february of 2026
After a brief but intense affair that ends in wreckage, a divorced mother of two sets out to mend her own shattered heart by going on ten first dates, a quest she can bear only with the ride-or-die support of her best friend and the small but mighty community she gathers along the way.
From the award winning author of two gorgeous novels about the slippery terrain of love and marriage set in South Florida comes a story about remaking one's life midstream, an exploration of friendship, the search for love and community, courtship, sex, marriage, and all the shades in between, and a love song to the author’s hometown of Madison, Wisconsin.
GIRLFRIENDING is a spinoff of Susanna’s award-winning short story, “The Goddess of Illicit Choices,” which won the 2024 [Coming As Soon As It’s Announced Publicly] Award for Short Fiction.
Coming 2/6/2026 from Third Rail Press
advance praise for girlfriending
“Susanna has written the next All Fours, a novel that is so charming and warm and smart and about friendship and love and middle-age and I want to give it to all my middle-aged friends going through divorces and life reckonings.”
“Once you start reading Susanna Daniel’s engaging story of friendship, heartbreak, and the sweet, full-throated awkwardness of midlife transitions, it’s hard to stop. ‘The Goddess of Illicit Choices’ seamlessly interweaves the romantic travails of two friends — one married and looking; the other divorced and and pining for the woman who recently broke her heart — into a tender, funny, and brave portrait of the silly stumbles, aches, and sublime joys of human intimacy.
“Every character is beautifully and indelibly rendered, and the women’s friendship is the story’s unwavering lodestar. You find yourself rooting for the narrator to get the profound love and connection she wants—only to realize that, at least in a certain way, she already has it and always will.”
“GIRLFRIENDING is not one of those Hemingway-in-Cuba, antiqued bronze, palm-frond ceiling fans from Restoration Hardware, lazily spinning, barely moving the air above a white linen overstuffed couch.
”This book is a beautiful, powerful fan with variable speeds that moves from the side table to the floor after I spill my mocktail laughing, and then laugh more because I spilled it but also because I can’t put the book down.”