It’s 2019, you don’t need us to tell you that girls rule the world. but, you know, it’s nice to hear from time to time. especially when it comes to the kick#&s girls on our shelves, and the equally amazing girls you read about. there are girls thriving, achieving their goals, avenging their families, making waves, getting the job done. there are so many that we know that you understand why we love to talk so much about our favorites.
You are reading: Books with the word girl in the title
so, in honor of these amazing girls, we want to stop rolling our eyes at one of their trends and celebrate it instead! It’s time to get excited about the different girls in the book titles. in fact, it’s one of our reading challenges in the year of epic reading! so get ready to dive in and find a new favorite!
books with ‘girl’ in the title
also known as books that run the world
1. the girl of fire and thorns by rae carson
Once a century, one person is chosen for greatness.
elisa is the chosen one. but he has always felt powerless, useless. now, on her sixteenth birthday, she has become the secret wife of a handsome and worldly king, a king whose country is in crisis. a king who needs her to be the chosen one, not a failed princess.
and he’s not the only one looking for it. Fierce enemies, seething with dark magic, are pursuing her. a bold and determined revolutionary believes she could be the savior of his people. soon it’s not just her life, but her own heart that’s at stake.
elisa could be everything for those who need her most. If the prophecy is fulfilled. if she finds the power deep within herself. If you don’t die young. most of the chosen ones do.
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2. hi girls from brittany cavallaro & emily henry
Winona has been starving for life in the seemingly perfect home that she shares with her seemingly perfect father, celebrity weatherman Stormy Olsen. No one knows that he locks the pantry door to control her eating and leaves bruises where no one can see them.
Lucille has been suffocating under the needs of her mother and her drug-dealing brother, wondering if there is more to her than losing tips from waitresses and a life of barely getting by.
One harrowing night, Winona and Lucille realize they can’t wait until graduation to start a new life. they need to get out. now. An hour later, they are armed with a plan that will take them from their small town in Michigan to Chicago.
all you need is three grand, fast. And really, a stolen convertible can’t hurt.
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3. rory power wild girls
It’s been eighteen months since the Raxter School for Girls was put under quarantine. Since the Tox hit and pulled Hetty’s life out from under her.
started slow. first the masters died one by one. it then began to infect the students, turning their bodies foreign and alien. now cut off from the rest of the world and left to fend for themselves on their island home, the girls dare not wander outside the school fence, where intoxication has turned the forest wild and dangerous. They await the cure they were promised as the poison seeps into everything.
But when Byatt goes missing, Hetty will do anything to find her, even if it means breaking out of quarantine and facing the horrors that lie beyond the fence. And when she does, Hetty learns that there is more to her story, to her life at Raxter, than she would have ever believed true.
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4. fire and paper girls by natasha ngan
Each year, eight beautiful girls are chosen as Paper Girls to serve the king. It’s the highest honor they could hope for… and the most demeaning. This year, there’s a ninth. And instead of paper, she’s made of fire.
Lei lives in a remote village with her father, where she is still haunted by the trauma of a decade of seeing her mother kidnapped by royal guards to an unknown fate. Now, the guards are back, and this time it’s Lei they’re after, the girl with the golden eyes whose beauty is rumored to have piqued the king’s interest.
During weeks of training in the opulent but oppressive palace, Lei and eight other girls learn the skills and charm befitting a king’s consort. there, she does the unthinkable: she falls in love with her. Her forbidden romance is entangled in an explosive plot that threatens the entire way of life in her world. Still the wide-eyed country girl at heart, Lei must decide how far she’s willing to go for justice and revenge.
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5. pretty girls suicide notes by lynn weingarten
They say Delia burned herself to death in her stepfather’s shed. They say it was suicide.
But June doesn’t believe it.
june and delia used to be closer than anything. best friends in that way that comes before everyone else, before the boys, before the family. It was like being in love, but more. they had a billion secrets, binding them like fine silken cords.
But one night, a year ago, everything changed. june, delia, and june’s boyfriend, ryan, were having a little fun. their good time got out of hand. And in the cold blue morning light, June only knew this: things would never be the same.
and now, a year later, delia is dead. June is sure that she was murdered. And he owes it to her to discover the truth…which is far more complicated than she could ever have imagined.
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6. girls made of snow and glass by melissa bashardoust
Sixteen-year-old Mina is motherless, her magician father is vicious, and her silent heart has never beat with love for anyone-has never beat at all, in fact, but she’d always thought that fact normal. She never guessed that her father cut out her heart and replaced it with one of glass. When she moves to Whitespring Castle and sees its king for the first time, Mina forms a plan: win the king’s heart with her beauty, become queen, and finally know love. The only catch is that she’ll have to become a stepmother.
Fifteen-year-old lynet resembles her late mother, and one day she discovers why: a wizard created her from snow in the image of the dead queen, on her father’s orders. But despite being the dead queen in the flesh, Ella Lynet would rather be like her fierce, regal stepmother, Ella Mine. she gets her wish when her father makes lynet queen of the southern territories, displacing mina. Now Mina is starting to look at Lynet with something akin to hatred, and Lynet must decide what to do – and who to be – to win back the only mother she’s ever known…or defeat her once and for all.
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7. a girl like that by tanaz bhathena
Sixteen-year-old Zarin Wadia is many things: a bright and vivacious student, an orphan, a risk taker.
She’s also the kind of girl parents warn their sons to stay away from: a troublemaker whose many romances are the subject of endless gossip at school.
You don’t want to get involved with a girl like that, they say. So how come eighteen-year-old Porus Dumasia has only had eyes for her? And how come Zarin and Porus ended up dead in a car together, crashed on the side of a road in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia? When the religious police arrive on the scene, everything everyone thought they knew about Zarin is called into question. And as her story pieced together, told through multiple perspectives, it became clear that she was much more than just such a girl.
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8. the girl with the red balloon by katherine locke
When sixteen-year-old Ellie Baum accidentally time-travels via red balloon to 1988 East Berlin, she’s caught up in a conspiracy of history and magic.
She meets members of an underground guild in East Berlin who use balloons and magic to help people escape over the wall, but even to the balloon makers, Ellie’s time travel is a mystery. When it becomes clear that someone is using dark magic to change history, Ellie must risk everything, including her only way home, to stop the process.
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9. girl out of water by laura silverman
Anise Sawyer plans to spend every minute of summer with her friends: surfing, chowing down on fish tacos drizzled with wasabi balsamic vinegar, and throwing bonfires that blaze until dawn. But when a serious car wreck leaves her aunt, a single mother of three, with two broken legs, it forces Anise to say goodbye for the first time to Santa Cruz, the waves, her friends, and even a kindling romance, and fly with her dad to Nebraska for the entire summer. Living in Nebraska isn’t easy. Anise spends her days caring for her three younger cousins in the childhood home of her runaway mom, a wild figure who’s been flickering in and out of her life since birth, appearing for weeks at a time and then disappearing again for months, or even years, without a word.
See Also: A list of Nick Cave’s favourite books and authors
To complicate matters, Lincoln, a charismatic one-armed skater, pushes Anise to trade her surfboard for a skateboard. As Anise grows closer to Lincoln and takes on all the burden and joy of her cousins, she loses touch with her friends back home, leading her to a terrifying question: Will she be like her mother and spend her life leaving her cousins behind? does she love?
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10. girl made of stars by ashley herring blake
“I need Owen to explain this. Because yes, I do know that Owen would never do that, but I also know Hannah would never lie about something like that.”
mara and owen are as close as the twins can get. So when Mara’s friend, Hannah, accuses Owen of rape, Mara doesn’t know what to think. can the brother she loves really be guilty of such a violent crime? Torn between the family she loves and her own sense of right and wrong, Mara feels lost, and it doesn’t help that things have been tense with her ex-girlfriend and best friend since childhood, Charlie.
As Mara, Hannah and Charlie navigate this new terrain, Mara must confront trauma from her own past and decide where Charlie fits into her future. Sensitively and candidly, this timely novel confronts the difficult questions surrounding consent, victim guilt, and sexual assault.
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11. undead girl gang by lily anderson
Mila Flores and her best friend Riley have always been inseparable. There’s not much excitement in their small town of Cross Creek, so Mila and Riley make their own fun, devoting most of their time to Riley’s favorite activity: amateur witchcraft.
So when Riley and two from Fairmont Academy want to say that the girls die under suspicious circumstances, Mila refuses to believe everyone’s explanation that her best friend was involved in a suicide pact. Instead, armed with a tube of lip gloss and an ancient grimoire, Mila does the unthinkable to discover the truth: she brings girls back to life.
Unfortunately, Riley, June and Dayton don’t remember their murders, but they have unfinished business to attend to. Now, with only seven days until the spell wears off and the girls return to their graves, Mila must confront the distracted group of undead teens and work fast to uncover her killer…before the killer strikes back. new.
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12. hullmetal girls by emily skrutskie
Aisha Un-Haad would do anything for her family. When her brother contracts a plague, she knows her janitor’s salary isn’t enough to fund his treatment. So she volunteers to become a Scela, a mechanically enhanced soldier sworn to protect and serve the governing body of the Fleet, the collective of starships they call home. If Aisha can survive the harrowing modifications and earn an elite place in the Scela ranks, she may be able to save her brother.
key tanaka wakes up in a scela body with only hazy memories of his previous life. she knows that she belongs to the privileged end of the fleet, but she doesn’t remember why she decided to give up a life of luxury to become a huge cyborg soldier. If she can get through the training, she might have a chance to recover her lost past from her.
In a unit of new recruits vying for the highest position, Aisha and Key’s paths collide, and the two must learn to work together, a difficult task for girls from opposite ends of the fleet. but a rebellion is brewing pitting those who yearn for the fleet’s independence against a government that struggles to maintain unity.
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13. the coldest girl in coldtown by holly black
Tana lives in a world where walled cities called Coldtowns exist. In them, quarantined monsters and humans mingle in a decadently bloody mix of predator and prey. The only problem is, once you pass through Coldtown’s gates, you can never leave.
One morning, after a perfectly ordinary party, Tana wakes up surrounded by corpses. The only survivors of this massacre are her maddeningly endearing, infected, borderline ex-boyfriend, and a mysterious boy charged with a terrible secret. Shocked and determined, Tana embarks on a race against time to save the three of them in the only way she knows how: by going straight to the evil and opulent heart of Coldtown.
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14. the girl king by mimi yu
Sisters Lu and Min have always understood their places as princesses of the Empire. Lu knows she is destined to become the dynasty’s first female ruler, while Min is resigned to a life in her shadow. Then their father declares their male cousin Set the heir instead—a betrayal that sends the sisters down two very different paths.
Determined to reclaim her birthright, Lu goes on the run. she needs an ally, and an army, if she wants to succeed. Her search leads her to Nokhai, the last surviving shape-shifting wolf. Nok wants to keep his identity a secret, but is forced to form an uneasy alliance with the girl whose family killed everyone he ever loved…
alone in the volatile court, min’s hidden power awakens: deadly, forbidden magic that could secure set’s reign…or allow min to claim the throne herself.
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15. if i were your girl by meredith russo
Amanda Hardy is the new girl in school. Like anyone else, all she wants is to make friends and fit in. But Amanda is keeping a secret, and she’s determined not to get too close to anyone.
But when she meets Grant, sweet and easy going, Amanda can’t help but let him into her life. As they spend more time together, she realizes how much she is losing by protecting her heart. She finds herself longing to share everything about herself with Grant, including her past. But Amanda is terrified that once she tells him the truth, he won’t be able to see past it.
because of the secret amanda has been keeping? is that at her old school, she used to be andrew. Will the truth cost Amanda her new life and her new love?
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16. the girl downstairs by stacey lee
By day, seventeen-year-old Jo Kuan works as a lady’s maid for the cruel daughter of one of the wealthiest men in Atlanta. But by night, Jo moonlights as the pseudonymous author of a newspaper advice column for the genteel Southern lady, “Dear Miss Sweetie.” When her column becomes wildly popular, she uses the power of the pen to address some of society’s ills, but she’s not prepared for the backlash that follows when her column challenges fixed ideas about race and gender.
As her opponents clamor to uncover Miss Sweetie’s secret identity, a mysterious letter begins a search for her own past and the parents who abandoned her as a baby. But when her efforts put her in the crosshairs of Atlanta’s most notorious criminal, Jo must decide if she, a girl used to living in the shadows, is ready to come out into the open.
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17. the girl from everywhere by heidi heilig
As the daughter of a time traveler, Nix has spent sixteen years sweeping across the globe and through the centuries aboard her father’s ship. Modern-day New York City, nineteenth-century Hawaii, other lands seen only in myth and legend—Nix has been to them all.
but when his father plays with his own existence, everything may be about to end. Rae Carson meets Outsider in this epic fantasy debut.
if there is a map, nix’s father can sail his ship, the temptation, anywhere, anytime. But now that he has discovered the only map he has ever sought, 1868 Honolulu, the year before Nix’s mother died in childbirth, Nix’s life, his entire existence, is at stake. no one knows what will happen if his father changes the past. It could erase Nix’s future, his dreams, his adventures… his connection to the charming Persian thief, Kash, who has been part of his crew for two years.
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18. claire legrand sawmill girls
Who are the Sawkill Girls?
marion: the rookie. clunky and simple, stable and reliable. overwhelmed by tragedy and hungry for love that she is sure she will never find.
zoey: the outcast. unlucky and lonely, hurt but hiding it. aching with grief and dreaming of missing girls. maybe she’s broken, or maybe everyone else is.
val: the queen bee. beautiful and privileged, ruthless and majestic. words like silk and eyes like knives; a heart made of secrets and a mouth full of lies.
Their stories come together on Sawkill Rock Island, where gleaming horses graze on rolling pastures and cold waves crash against black cliffs. where children whisper the legend of an insidious monster at parties and around campfires. where girls have been disappearing for decades, stolen by a ravenous evil that no one has dared to fight…until now.
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19. hot dog girl by jennifer dugan
Elouise (Lou) Parker is determined to have the absolute best, most impossibly epic summer of her life. There are just a few things standing in her way:
got a job at magic castle playland… as a giant dancing hotdog. His crush, the dreamy diving pirate Nick, already has a girlfriend, who is literally the princess of the park. But Lou has never liked anyone, boy or other, that much before, and now she wants a chance at happily ever after. His best friend, Seeley, the carousel operator, who has always been up for anything, suddenly isn’t anymore when it comes to Lou’s search for the perfect girl or Lou’s plan to get closer to him. Nick.
And it turns out this will be his last summer in magic castle playland, ever, unless he can find a way to keep it from closing.
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20. lauren karcz’s unfinished girl gallery
Mercedes Moreno is an artist. At least, she thinks she could be, even though she hasn’t been able to paint anything worthwhile in the past year.
His lack of inspiration could be because his grandmother is in a coma. Or the fact that she is in love with her best friend, Victoria, but she is too afraid to admit her true feelings.
despite mercedes creative block, art begins to appear in unexpected ways. A piano shows up on her front lawn one morning, and a mysterious new neighbor invites Mercedes to paint with her at the red mangrove estate.
at the estate, mercedes can create in ways she’s never done before. But Mercedes can’t get anything out of the property, including her newfound clarity. Mercedes can’t live both lives forever, and ultimately must choose between this perfect world of art and truth and a much messier reality.
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21. alex flinn july girls
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Britta is the bubbly drama queen. She needs to get away—and a peaceful cabin in the woods sounds like the perfect escape.
meredith is the winner. she’s spent her entire life preparing for college, but at what cost? she now wonders if that’s all there is.
kate is the reluctant socialite. She’s looking for a reason to start over after running away from small town Georgia and an embarrassing family secret from her.
spider is the quiet intellectual. She is fighting the pain that has isolated her from her peers for much of her life.
When these four very different young women stay together for a month in the mountains, they discover that sometimes getting away from it all can only bring you back to who you really are.
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22. fat girl on a plane by kelly devos
High school senior Cookie Vonn’s post-graduation dreams include getting out of Phoenix, attending Parsons and becoming the next great fashion designer. But in the world of fashion, being fat is a cardinal sin. It doesn’t help that she’s constantly compared to her supermodel mother—and named after a dessert.
Thanks to her job at a fashion blog, Cookie signs up for a trip to New York to present her portfolio and apply for a scholarship, but her plans are put on hold when she’s declared too fat to fly. Forced to ask her best friend for money, Ella Cookie buys a second seat on the plane. she comes to town to find that she’s been replaced by the boss’s daughter, a girl who is everything she’s not: ultra-thin and super-rich. Bowing to the pressure of society, she vows to lose weight, get out of the friend zone with the person she likes, and get her life back on track.
Cookie was hoping for sunshine and rainbows, but nothing in her new life is turning out the way she planned. When the fashion designer of the moment offers her what she’s always wanted, the opportunity to live and study in New York, she finds herself in a world full of people more interested in putting women down than dressing them. Her designs cause a sensation, but her true dream of creating great clothes for people of all sizes seems to get further away every day.
Will he realize that he has always had the power to make his own dreams come true?
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23. They are not the girls you are looking for
Lulu Saad doesn’t need your advice, thank you very much. She’s got her three best friends and nothing can stop her from conquering the known world. Sure, for half a minute she thought she’d nearly drowned a cute guy at a party, but he was totally faking it. And fine, yes, she caused a scene during Ramadan. It’s all under control. Ish.
Except maybe this time you’ve done a little more damage than you think. And if Lulu can’t get out of this mess soon, she’ll have to do more than mend friendships, family alliances, and wet clothes. she’ll have to go find herself.
- don’t buy the girls you’re looking for right now!
24. girl takes over m-e girard
All Pen wants is to be the kind of girl she’s always been. So why does everyone have a problem with it? They think the way she looks and acts means she’s trying to be a boy—that she should quit trying to be something she’s not. If she dresses like a girl, and does what her folks want, it will show respect. If she takes orders and does what her friend Colby wants, it will show her loyalty.
but respect and loyalty, pen discovers, are empty words. Old world parents, disintegrating friendships, and strong feelings for other girls compel the pen to see the truth: that to be who she really wants to be, she’ll have to be a man.
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25. the girl returned by the sea by adrienne young
For as long as she can remember, Tova has lived among the Svell, the people who found her washed ashore as a child and use her for her gift as a Truthtongue. Her own home and clan are long-faded memories, but the sacred symbols and staves inked over every inch of her skin mark her as one who can cast the rune stones and see into the future. She has found a fragile place among those who fear her, but when two clans to the east bury their age-old blood feud and join together as one, her world is dangerously close to collapse.
For the first time in generations, the leaders of the svell are divided. should they keep the peace or go to war with the allied clans to protect their newfound power? And when Ella’s cacique turns to Tova to throw the stones, she sets in motion a series of events that will not only change the landscape of the continent forever, but give her something she thought she could never have again: a home.
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26. girls who disappear by lauren oliver
Dara and Nick used to be inseparable, but that was before the accident that left Dara’s beautiful face scarred and the two sisters totally estranged.
When dara disappears on her birthday, nick thinks dara is just playing. But another girl, nine-year-old Madeline Snow, is also missing, and Nick is becoming more convinced that the two disappearances are related.
Now, Nick has to find his sister, before it’s too late.
In this compelling, cutting-edge novel, Lauren Oliver creates a world of intrigue, loss, and suspicion as two sisters seek to find themselves and each other.
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27. girl to pieces by kathleen glasgow
Charlotte Davis is in pieces. At seventeen she’s already lost more than most people lose in a lifetime. But she’s learned how to forget. The broken glass washes away the sorrow until there is nothing but calm. You don’t have to think about your father and the river. Your best friend, who is gone forever. Or your mother, who has nothing left to give you.
Each new scar makes Charlie’s heart a little harder, but it still hurts a lot. it hurts enough that you don’t care anymore, which is sometimes what has to happen before you can find your way back from the brink.
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28. the girl from the chupeco rin well
You may think me biased, being murdered myself. But my state of being has nothing to do with the curiosity toward my own species, if we can be called such. We do not go gentle, as your poet encourages, into that good night.
a dead girl walks the streets.
she hunts assassins. child killers, like the man who dumped her body in a well three hundred years ago.
And when a strange guy with weird tattoos moves into the neighborhood, she finds out he’s up to something else. And soon they will both be drawn into the world of eerie doll rituals and dark Shinto exorcisms that will take them from American suburbia to the remote valleys and shrines of Aomori, Japan.
because the boy has a terrifying secret, one he would just kill to get out.
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29. amy reed’s nowhere girls
Who are the Nowhere Girls? They’re everygirl. But they start with just three:
grace salter is the new girl in town, whose family was kicked out of their old community after her southern baptist preacher mother became a radical liberal after falling off a horse and hitting her head.
rosina suarez is the queer punk girl in a conservative Mexican immigrant family, who dreams of a life playing music instead of babysitting her bunch of cousins and waitressing at her uncle’s restaurant.
erin delillo is obsessed with two things: marine biology and star trek: the next generation, but they are not enough to distract her from her suspicion that she may, in fact, be an android.
When Grace learns that Lucy Moynihan, the former occupant of her new home, was kicked out of town for accusing the popular kids at school of gang rape, she is furious that Lucy was never given justice. . For their own personal reasons, Rosina and Erin feel equally deeply about Lucy’s tragedy, so they form an anonymous group of girls at Prescott High to resist the sexist culture at their school, which includes boycotting sex of any kind. with male students.
- buy the nowhere girls now!
who is your favorite girl in you? tell us in the comments!
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