Adult friendship is hard.
This book makes it better.
We Should Get Together: The Secret to Cultivating Better Friendships
Written and illustrated by Kat Vellos
“There is so much to love about this handbook.”
— BookLife starred review, Editor’s Pick⚡️
“Looking to improve the quality of your relationships? Let Kat Vellos be your expert guide.”
— Casper ter Kuile, author of The Power of Ritual
“Kat Vellos is the Queen of Friendship. Her words offer inspiration to all of us to slow down, deepen our connections, make new friends wherever we go, and find belonging in the digital age.”
— Adam Smiley Poswolsky, Author of Friendship in the Age of Loneliness
“This book is one that I am definitely going to recommend to clients when they struggle to make new friends or believe that those days are over. This book is uplifting, hopeful, and action-oriented. It's a revelation!”
— Lisa Orbe-Austin, Psychologist, author of Own Your Greatness
“This book should be mandatory reading for all adults!”
— Monica DiChristina, therapist and host of the Still Becoming podcast
Friendship shouldn’t be a punchline
I get it. Adult friendship is hard (even when we’re not in a freakin’ pandemic). But it doesn’t have to be.
We Should Get Together is the handbook for anyone who’s ready for better friendships, now.
We’ll unpack the four biggest challenges that adults face when trying to make or maintain friendships during adulthood, and I’ll give you the tools to overcome them with:
Expert research
Relatable non-cringey stories
Practical tips and inspiring action steps
60 illustrations
55 suggested activities
A book club discussion guide
300+ conversation starters
We Should Get Together is the perfect book for anyone who wants to have dedicated, life-enriching friends, and who wants to be that kind of friend, too.
I’ll read it to you
You’re only 5 hours and 17 minutes away from a world of better friendships. Listen to the audiobook while you're walking the dog, cooking, doing dishes, or exercising.
What the experts say
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![Lisa Orbe-Austin, Psychologist, author of Own Your Greatness, is a Black woman wearing a white shirt and black jacket, smiling a warm friendly smile.]()
"This book is one that I am definitely going to recommend to clients when they struggle to make new friends or believe that those days are over. This book is uplifting, hopeful, and action-oriented. It's a revelation!"
Lisa Orbe-Austin, Psychologist, author of Own Your Greatness
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![Casper ter Kuile is smiling a jubilant smile. He's a white man with a gray collar shirt on and a dark blue jacket. He has short hair that's styled in a playfully messy way.]()
"Looking to improve the quality of your relationships? Let Kat Vellos be your expert guide. You’ll come for the great advice and stay for the hilarious cartoons!”
Casper ter Kuile, CEO of The Nearness, author of The Power of Ritual
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![Smiling photo of Ann-Marie Pawlicki Dinkel, Event Manager at CMX]()
"We Should Get Together is a timeless classic covering the foundational ingredients of successful friendships, and a guide on how to apply those ingredients like a recipe to create beautiful friendships no matter what stage of life you’re in.”
Ann Marie Pawlicki Dinkel, Senior Field Marketing Manager at Webflow
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![Smiley Poswolsky, a white man with curly dark hair, is smiling in front of a gray background. He has stylish rectangle glasses on.]()
"Kat Vellos is the Queen of Friendship. Her words offer inspiration to all of us to slow down, deepen our connections, make new friends wherever we go, and find belonging in the digital age."
Smiley Poswolsky, International Keynote Speaker
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![Ariba Jahan, a Bangladeshi woman with wave dark hair and bright pink lipstick is smiling in front of a small grove of trees.]()
"Kat lets us in on the heart of human connection and equips us to foster it in the most beautiful way possible. Whether you have childhood friendships you want to nurture or new friendships to invite, this book is a must read."
Ariba Jahan, VP of Innovation & Design Strategy at The Ad Council, Chief of Strategy at the Foundation for Social Connection
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![Rick Kitagawa, an Asian man with fun spiky dark hair is smiling a big friendly smile. He's wearing a blue collared shirt and a dark jacket and in front of a light blue background.]()
"We Should Get Together deserves a place on everyone’s bookshelf or e-reader."
Rick Kitagawa, Co-founder of Spotlight Trust and Co-author of The Future Is Trust
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![Monica DiCristina, a therapist and host of the show Still Becoming, is smiling. She is a white woman with wavy blond hair and she's wearing a white collared shirt and chunky fabric green earrings.]()
“This book should be mandatory reading for all adults! You will find yourself feeling validated by what Kat names as difficulties of making and keeping friends as an adult, and find hope and a plan for how to remedy this. I love this book and plan to recommend it to many.”
Monica DiCristina, Therapist, host of the Still Becoming podcast
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![Jorge Arango is smiling in a dark gray tee shirt and thin wire-frame glasses in front of a neutral beige background.]()
"In our busy tech-mediated lives, it's easy to forgo authentic human connections — to our detriment. We Should Get Together reminds us why nurturing solid friendships matters and offers practical frameworks to help us make deeper connections."
Jorge Arango, author of Living in Information: Responsible Design for Digital Places
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![Gayle Allen, a person with short dark hair, and host of the podcast called Curious Minds at Work, is smiling in a light pink collared shirt.]()
"We Should Get Together is a game changer for our health and well-being. It’s the ultimate playbook for making new friendships and strengthening old ones."
Gayle Allen, CEO and Co-Founder, The Innovators’ Circle
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"I don’t know about you, but I was in need of more deep, meaningful connections even before a year of quarantine and isolation. Having studied We Should Get Together like a sacred text, I now feel confident to renew my treasured relationships and explore new friendships as we reemerge into an uncertain world."
Hugh Weber, CEO & Creative Counsel for We Must Be Bold & The Great Discontent
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![Michelle Smith, a blond woman, smiles in her white tiled kitchen while holding a sprig of basil. She's wearing a blue denim button-down shirt.]()
“Kat beautifully breaks down the ins and outs of what makes a successful and meaningful connection and how and where to find them. We Should Get Together offers practical, real-world examples and ideas we can all apply to our lives.”
Michelle Smith, co-host of the Get Wellthy podcast and founder of The Whole Smiths
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Available everywhere books are sold
Physical books: Order online
Mmmm, paper. I suggest ordering physical copies via my affiliate links all over this website which will take you to Amazon or Bookshop. When you buy via affiliate links, I may earn a small commission on qualifying purchases, at no extra cost to you. Thanks for your support!
Physical books: Buy it in person
Walk into your favorite local bookstore, and ask them to order it for you. Whether you’re in Brooklyn, Berlin, or Buenos Aires, they can get it for you.
Ebooks: I recommend ordering ebooks directly from me. When you buy directly from creators like me, I get to keep 100% of the sale price. You can also get it on most major ebook stores like Kindle.
Audiobook: We Should Get Together is available on Audible, narrated by me.
Reviews: Please post reviews on Amazon or Goodreads. We all go there to read reviews even if when we intend to shop elsewhere, amirite? If you post a review on Amazon, just be sure to mention that you bought the book elsewhere so they don’t take down your review when they notice the book’s not in your order history because that’s a thing that can happen.
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Fans around the world
Professional Reviews
Professional Review from Publisher’s Weekly BookLife division
“Vellos, a user experience designer and founder of the discussion series Better Than Small Talk, brings her social know-how to the masses with her marvelous debut handbook on adult friendship. After moving to the San Francisco Bay Area and having a tough time making long-term, quality friends, Vellos decided to study experiences of friendship. In interviews, discussions, and surveys, she found that most people reported a feeling she calls platonic longing. Vellos attributes this longing to the quest for friendship being stymied by frequent moves, busyness, other relationship commitments, and “antisocial media.” She is a firm believer that vulnerability and hard work are the keys to overcoming these obstacles and building quality connections, and her book lays out strategies for cultivating friendships both new and old.
There is so much to love about this handbook. Vellos’s writing is easy and conversational; she shares stories of cooking with housemates and neighbors as if chatting with the reader over a meal. Such anecdotes are seamlessly accompanied by robust research that helps readers understand the value of relationships in measurable ways. At the end of each chapter, a “Try it” section is filled with activities, journal prompts, and more invitations to dig deeper. Vellos’s own charming drawings complement the text.
Vellos powerfully and personally challenges the reader. Her tips are more like life coaching sessions, pushing her audience to defy awkwardness and ask thoughtful questions. Those reading this book to improve their friendships may end up improving themselves as well. The only limitation is that Vellos’s advice is focused on face-to-face relationships in urban environments, though much of it is applicable in other situations. If every person who reads this book takes it to heart, there will be a lot more friendship in the world.
Takeaway: This tender, practical handbook will help lonely millennials, isolated elders, the recently heartbroken, and anyone else eager for more and better friendships.
Great for fans of Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project, Brené Brown, Mari Andrew.”
— BookLife, Starred review, Editor's pick ⚡️
“...The sheer amount of energy and inventiveness on display in these pages, engagingly written and illustrated by the author, will give even the most jaded some hope for more friendships in the future. A heartfelt and winningly optimistic guide to understanding—and finding more—friendship.”
— Kirkus Reviews
Out in the wild
You can read it on a plane, you can read it on a train, you can read it anywhere except out in the rain. If you’re in the rain, listen to the audiobook instead.
Got a cute photo of you with the book? Post it on Instagram and tag me @katvellos_author
We Should Get Together: The Secret to Cultivating Better Friendships
Book Identifier Numbers and Editorial Detail
We Should Get Together
ISBN Hardcover: 978-1-73437-970-9
ISBN Paperback: 978-1-73437-971-6
ISBN Ebook: 978-1-73437-973-0
Author: Kat Vellos
Illustrator: Kat Vellos
We Should Get Together was edited by Katie Salisbury, who also edited the bestsellers Why We Can’t Sleep by Ada Calhoun, The Leader’s Guide by Eric Ries, Women Who Don’t Wait in Line by Reshma Saujani, and Who Am I to Lead by Torin Perez. Katie was a 2021 finalist for the Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship program. In addition to being a spectacular editor, Katie is also a writer whose work has appeared in the New York Times, Vanity Fair, The Ringer, the Asian American Writers' Workshop, and elsewhere. As a Spring 2017 TED Resident, Katie gave a TED Talk titled "As American as Chop Suey" about her photojournalism project on Chinese restaurant workers in New York. Her book about Anna May Wong, the first Asian American movie star, will be released by Dutton in 2024.