Love, obsession, jealousy, validation, support … the many complex and inspiring facets of female friendship make for great literary subject matter.

In honour of Galentine’s Day (the fictional holiday from TV show Parks and Recreation that occurs on 13 February and celebrates your love for your best girlfriends) here is a list of recommended reads with female relationships at their heart.

Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery

This coming-of-age story about the imaginative and exuberant orphan girl, Anne Shirley, is one of those formative childhood classics that bonds its readers in shared rapturous remembrances of their favourite characters and scenes. Some may speak wistfully of the charming and rakish Gilbert Blythe, but of equal importance is Anne’s friendship with her ‘kindred spirit’ Diana Barry. Though the two girls differ in some of their outlooks, they’re constantly supporting each other in their everyday travails – dealing with horrible school gossip Josie Pye – and troublesome misadventures – green hair and getting accidentally drunk on raspberry cordial.

One particular scene sticks out as an encapsulation of the all-consuming friendships during childhood: an overwrought Anne dramatically confides in her guardian Marilla Cuthbert, weeping with increasing bitterness: ‘I love Diana so, Marilla. I cannot ever live without her. But I know very well when we grow up that Diana will get married and go away and leave me. And oh, what shall I do? I hate her husband–I just hate him furiously.’

Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney

In this sharply cut novel about young arty types in Dublin, Rooney has crafted a gem that shines with the pleasures of youth and the honest messiness of friendships. Best friends, comrades-in-arms and ex-lovers Frances and Bobbi catch the eye of sophisticated photographer Melissa, who introduces them to her world and to her husband Nick. The two young women have a somewhat unequal and co-dependent relationship – though Frances attempts to project a droll and indifferent front, she also feels a bit in the shadow of the charismatic and alluring Bobbi. This power dynamic, and Frances’ eventual ménage à trois with Melissa and Nick, allows Rooney to explore the unspoken emotions and pretensions underneath each relationship. Set in a milieu that feels intensely familiar and personal – the bad romantic decisions and sprawling online chats – Conversations with Friends is a fantastic illumination of the hard-won ways people discover and reinvent themselves.

Into the Fire by Sonia Orchard

A year after her best friend died in a house fire, Lara can’t come to terms with the loss. Logic says there was no more she could have done to save the mercurial and unhappy Alice, but Lara can’t escape the feeling that she is somehow to blame for the tragedy. Rummaging through the remains of their shared past, Lara reveals a friendship with Alice that was as troubled as it was intense. Into the Fire dives into the many ways we betray one another and our ideals. It is also a great campus novel, and the friendship that is formed between Lara and Alice at the University of Melbourne in the early nineties is accurate to the political and personal changes that people undergo in those environments, and to the ways that key influential figures can challenge your preconceptions and values.

Swing Time by Zadie Smith

Spanning north-west London to West Africa, Swing Time centres on the complicated friendship of two women who both dream of being dancers, but only one has the talent. The book follows them throughout their childhood in the housing estates of London, through the abrupt end of their friendship in their early twenties and into their middle age, where memories of this once vital friendship continue to affect their choices. At once a story about friendship and music and identity, this is also Smith flexing all of her keen anthropological skills, providing a pointed class commentary about the sacrifices of climbing the social ladder.

Hey Ladies!: The Story of 8 Best Friends, 1 Year, and Way, Way Too Many Emails by Michelle Markowitz & Caroline Moss

Based on their column of the same name from The Toast, Michelle Markowitz and Caroline Moss’ book depicts a year in the life of a fictitious group of friends in New York City, told via emails, text chains, Snapchats, Slacks, and every other modern form of communication you can imagine. Think Sex and the City, but where each character is exposed as the terrible and narcissistic person she is: there’s Nicole, who’s always broke and trying to pay for things with gift cards; Katie, the self-important journalist for whom a tweet and a byline are the same thing; and Jen, the DIY suburban bride-to-be. While Markowitz and Moss are bitingly accurate in their depiction of this insular group’s banal obnoxiousness, they also clearly maintain a fond tenderness for each character’s foibles. This is cringe comedy at its most fun.

My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante

No list about female friendships would be complete without this bildungsroman about two intelligent and ambitious girls growing up in 1950s Naples and trying to escape the brutal poverty of their circumstances. By turns competitive, caring, jealous and needy, Elena and Lila are the most complex of friends/rivals: their mutual intelligence creates moments of true affinity, but their increasingly divergent paths in life cause resentment and second-guessing. Even though Ferrante is depicting a highly specific world – Naples in the 1950s where the limited options for young girls create a pressure-cooker environment – her writing feels universal.

Eyes Too Dry by Alice Chipkin & Jessica Tavassoli

Meet Tava, a young medical student in a deep depression, and Alice, her friend and housemate who is trying to figure out how to support her. Together, they have created Eyes Too Dry, a graphic memoir that explores heavy feelings, queer friendship and the therapeutic possibilities of making comics.

Saving Francesca by Melina Marchetta

If you want to experience the fierce devotion of teenage friendships, Saving Francesca is the perfect read. Francesca Spinelli is at the beginning of her second term in Year Eleven at an all boys school that has just started accepting girls. Frankie isn’t thrilled about being lumped in with the other three girls from her previous school, and to make things worse, her mother is in the middle of a breakdown. The chemistry between Frankie and her classmates in this book is infectious, and you won’t want to say goodbye to them after investing so heavily in their friendship. So strong is the dynamic that it’s easy to see why Marchetta has returned to this group of friends in several equally sublime subsequent books (The Piper’s Son and the forthcoming The Place at Dalhousie). Joyous and celebratory, this is a book about embracing your idiosyncrasies and how finding your people can make you fearless.

Hot Little Hands by Abigail Ulman

This short-story collection was the buzz of the town when it was published, and it’s easy to see why. Each story here focuses on young women, from early teenagers to late twenty-somethings, as they come to terms with what it means to grow up, in ways that are moving and often hilarious. Ulman isn’t afraid to make her characters selfish and difficult to like, but she never loses sight of why they are that way. Her dialogue is sharp and attentive, and despite the sometimes frivolous and transient nature of the relationships on display, Ulman imbues each story with an emotional heft that will resonate with readers.

The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel

This complete compendium of Alison Bechdel’s magnum opus collects the entirety of her influential comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For. Starting in 1983, this comic stars a group of queer and lesbian friends and their families, and has developed into an eye-opening and acerbically funny chronicle of LGBTQIA+ life in modern America. Reading this is like checking in with a sprawling family who are frequently in each other’s business: there’s Mo, a neurotic feminist book clerk; Lois, the voracious ‘Lesbian Avenger’; mums Clarice and Tony; and Sparrow, who can’t kick her self-help habit. We follow their sex lives, their political activism and the minutiae of their lives right up to the Iraq War. Part soap opera, part political document, The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For deserves a place among the greatest comic strips of the 20th and 21st centuries.