Waiting To Exhale Books in Order

The Waiting to Exhale books follow four Black women — Savannah, Bernadine, Robin, and Gloria — whose friendship carries them through the highs and lows of love, career, and family life in Phoenix, Arizona. Across Waiting to Exhale and its sequel Getting to Happy, Terry McMillan tracks how their bond deepens as they move from thirtysomething ambition to the complicated middle of life.

In Waiting to Exhale, each woman is standing at a crossroads. Savannah has just taken a new job and moved to Phoenix, hoping both her career and love life will finally click. Bernadine is blindsided when the husband she supported for years decides to leave, pushing her to rethink who she is without him. Robin is successful at work but keeps falling for the wrong men, and Gloria is a single mom and salon owner trying to protect her son while wondering if there is still room for romance.

Their personal crises overlap and collide, but the heart of the story is the way they show up for one another — over phone calls, late-night talks, and long evenings full of laughter and hard truths. The book helped define a new wave of contemporary Black women's fiction in the 1990s and inspired a popular film, yet on the page it still feels intimate and familiar, like listening in on a group of friends you already know.

Getting to Happy returns to the same four women about fifteen years later. They are now in their fifties and early sixties, facing empty nests, new marriages and divorces, financial worries, and the lingering fallout from choices they made when they were younger. Some are grieving deep losses, others are stuck in jobs or relationships that no longer fit, yet each is still trying to figure out what happiness looks like at this stage of life.

The tone is warm, funny, and blunt about aging, but it never lets go of the idea that joy and reinvention are possible well past midlife.

Across both novels, Phoenix feels like a fifth character — sunny, sprawling, sometimes lonely — and the stories roam through workplaces, living rooms, hair salons, and backyard parties. Readers who enjoy character-driven stories, candid talk about sex and money, and the push-pull of long friendships will find plenty to sink into here.

For the best experience, read the books in order: start with Waiting to Exhale to meet the women when they are still convinced life should have gone according to plan, then pick up Getting to Happy to see how they rebuild, forgive, and keep cheering one another on.