I’m looking for books that stir every human emotion. I want stories that make you cry (not necessarily in a bad way), ache, feel grateful for life, and remind you that you belong. I want tales about girlhood, growing up, trauma, love, identity, and healing. I want something that captures what it means to be a girl or a woman trying to find her place in the world. I don’t care if it’s fiction, memoir, or essays, I just want something genuine that resonates with me.
I know this might sound really strange, but in short: I’m craving a book that captures the chaos and beauty of being a girl.
by Agile-Event-1300
19 Comments
Betty
Virgin Suicides
Girls with Long Shadows
Anne of Green Gables
Not strange, search the sub for girlhood, it gets asked fairly often.
Beauty Queens by Libba Bray
A tree grows in brooklyn
Cat’s Eye by Margaret Atwood
Jane Eyre
Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
The River by Rumer Godden
She’s Come Undone by Wally Lamb
Practical Magic
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Bastard Out of Carolina, Dorothy Allison. Warning, lots of triggers.
A Thousand Splendid Suns
Flight Behavior
Memoir – I’m Glad My Mom Died
The Frozen River
I Who Have Never Known Man
My Best Friend’s Exorcism by Grady Hendrix
Maybe more unconventional but Elsewhere by Alexis Schaitkin did this for me. I was aching.
I also love girlhood friendship stories deeply, here are ones that stirred me: Summer Sisters by Judy Blume, We Are Okay by Nina LaCour, Some Kind of Happiness by Claire Legrand, How to Be Bad by E. Lockhart and others
Other Words for Home
Syrian refugee girl on the edge of adolescense, in between countries and identities, wanting to belong and worried. It’s written in free verse that sometimes aches with emotioin.
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, by Betty Smith.
My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult had me bawling
Pachinko and My Brilliant Friend (series) also top notch featuring women
-Circe (non-traditional suggestion, but it actually fits the bill and it’s beautifully written)
-Salvage the Bones
-My Brilliant Friend (the first in a quartet)
-She’s Come Undone
-The Blind Assassin or Cat’s Eye, both by Atwood
-The Marriage Portrait
-Fortune’s Rocks
-White Oleander
-Amy and Isabel
-Brooklyn
Some of these are novels that I was very into as a teenager and young woman because they felt like mirrors in so many ways.
Okay, the title alone feels like it was written specifically for what you’re asking… How to Break a Girl by Amanda Sung. I just finished it and I’m still reeling.
This book is exactly that chaos and beauty of girlhood you’re craving. It follows three Asian women navigating friendship, toxic love (because they simply don’t know what a healthy relationship looks like due to childhood abuse), identity crises (constantly feeling home and foreign at the same time), and the brutal weight of trying to find their place in a world that constantly tries to break them. The writing is raw, unflinching, and so viscerally emotional that I found myself ugly-crying multiple times (in the best, most cathartic way).
What gutted me most was how it captures that specific ache of girlhood: the betrayals, the desperate need to feel chosen, the friendships that hold you together when everything else falls apart. There’s trauma, yes, but also healing, resilience, and moments of such profound gratitude for the women who show up for each other. It doesn’t shy away from the messy, painful parts of being a woman, but it also celebrates the fierce beauty of survival and sisterhood.
If you want a book that stirs every human emotion and reminds you that you belong, even when the world makes you feel like you don’t, this is it. Also worth noting: it’s been #1-#2 Single Women Fiction Hot New Release on Amazon, so clearly I’m not the only one feeling all the feelings.
Fair warning: it’s intense, but it’s also so worth it!!! Hugs
**Lady Tan’s Circle of Women** by Lisa See
For memoirs the first one that came to my mind was Down the Drain by Julia Fox. The strongest love in that book are her friendships