Take What You Can by Naima Coster Published: 6 August 2026

Val and Milly fell in love with France at the same time they fell in love with each other, bonding as the only Black students on a study-abroad trip. Now, they are in their thirties, each married and with a baby girl on the way. And when Milly suggests Val move to New York to raise their daughters together after a decade apart, it's a resounding yes.

However, Val and Milly are no longer the girls they once were. 

Milly is a successful influencer married to restaurant royalty, and Val, is a brilliant journalist, struggling to write her first book and fit into her old friend's new world. The realities of class and social capital, of strained marriages and the demands of motherhood, serve as constant reminders of how far apart they've grown. And no matter how much they try to avoid it, everything comes back to a rift that began all those years ago in France. What they've long tried to bury may finally destroy their sisterhood...

Author: Naima Coster

Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)

Published on 6 August 2026 by Orion Publishing Co (Trapeze) in the United Kingdom.

Hardback | 368 pages
240 x 156