The Girls Who Grew Big really resonated with me. I found Leila Mottley's writing style to be beautiful and raw and authentic. I could feel each girl's emotions and pain. Adela is a 16-year-old overachiever who gets pregnant, and her parents send her to her grandmother in Florida so she can have the baby in secret, away from their perfect life. She meets up with a group of misfit teen mothers, and drama ensues. The chapters alternate between Adela and two of the other young mothers, Simone and Emory. i would have liked to have gotten to know the others as well. They were in the background and not really fleshed out like the main three. The ending also felt a bit rushed and left me wanting more, but I really enjoyed It overall. Thanks to NetGalley and Knopf for the ARC.

I have never read anything quite like this book. Days after finishing it, I am still processing. Leila Mottley brought an important voice to the table- who ever thinks about the pregnant teenage girl, except in a moment of pity or scorn? We learn that The Girls are real people and not all of them planned this for their lives. Many want and are determined to do better. Let's applaud the ones who make it and mourn for the ones who don't. I love when a book gives you a different perspective that you never imagined. Wishing love and peace to all the Adelas and Simones out there. I'm definitely going to recommend this to as many people as I can.

I love the depth of these words, how dark and delicate the transformation of the story. This is a great read that responds to voices who need to be heard.

Special thanks to NetGalley and Knopf for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This book was outstanding. All the characters were unique and compelling in their own ways. I also loved how the author handled these tough topics, it felt incredibly real.

One of my favorite parts of this book was the setting. I felt as if I was dropped into the girls' world, incredibly well done!

Thank you NetGalley for the e-arc of this book.

The Girls Who Grew Big is a captivating story following three teen mothers living in Florida. We get to follow them on their journey into motherhood and all the struggles that come with it. There’s so much depth to this story, including friendships, girlhood, generational family trauma, and forgiveness. I loved being in each one of their point of view and felt so much for them. Each of their stories is very complex and compelling and it’s so amazing seeing who they become by the end of the book. Coming from a second generation teen mom, this book was amazing! The author did such a great job conveying the struggles a teen mother faces. 5 stars.

The Girls Who Grew Big is a book about a group of teens who become young mothers and are abandoned by their parents. They band together to survive, helping one another with the challenges of raising children, finding food and shelter and dealing with their children’s fathers or their current boyfriends. Their friendships are fragile and their lives are continually being upended by life’s many challenges. The “girls” as they call themselves eventually find the strength and self-knowledge to move forward in life. Leila Mottley’s writing is rich and emotional as the story is told through the point-of-view of each of the three main characters. The language is raw and passionate. At times, the book seemed a bit repetitive and too long although the reader becomes engaged in rooting for these women to overcome the odds and succeed. Thanks for an advanced reader's copy.

4.5 ⭐️

Set near a beach in the Florida panhandle, this novel navigates three young women who are in The Girls, a club made up of young mothers and mothers-to-be.

Leila Mottley is quite a talent, and I love her raw writing and how it addresses topics that are usually glossed over. These young women come from rough households and have to be resourceful to live and give their children what they need. And they are also confronted by with what they need the most might not be them, which is a harsh reality.

The three main characters are Simone, who is in her early twenties with boy/girl twins and finds herself pregnant again. She is the leader of the group. Emory is very academic (and white), and she lives with her grandparents and her new baby Kai. Emory is determined to graduate and go to college and is a bit resentful of being a new mom to a fussy baby and how that might derail her plans. Adela, with an eye on the Olympics in swimming, is newly pregnant and new in town, sent to live with her grandparents, when a boy in town catches her eye. These young women don’t always get along (real life!), but they still have a bond.

I was genuinely surprised at one plot point and gasped. I don’t want to approach spoiler territory, so I won’t say anything about that. Adela’s and Emory’s stories went in directions that I wasn’t quite expecting. I like when a novel, especially when it’s not a thriller, surprises me.

I realize that it would have diluted the effect to go more in-depth into the other young women in The Girls, but at times I thought it was off-putting that we only knew three of the characters and the others only by name. Also, I found it a bit far-fetched that Emory would get into Stanford and other Ivy League colleges while not having the long academic and extracurricular resume that she couldn’t have had with being a new mom.

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf for an Advance Reader Copy in exchange for an unbiased review.

It publishes June 24, 2025.

“We was just mothers figuring it out” is one of the universal truths from this moving story. There are other truths here that seem to pertain to most young girls and young women if not all. Can you not remember being a half baked girl romanticizing a half baked boy and failing to realize that the object of your affection does not really have the sterling qualities of your imagination? Everything being ideal, you experience feeling love at its purest giving birth to your child but from that child’s first breath you are indeed just figuring it out. And, lastly, parents, husbands, boyfriends, etc. may support you if you are lucky but if you have a loyal group of female friends who really know you then you absolutely blessed.

To start off, thank you NetGalley for this arc! I found this novel to be very immersive and unique in the plot and characters to anything I’ve ever read before. It gave me new insight to situations I am not familiar with, and I will move forward in life with this knowledge ingrained in me. I found the multiple point of views to be effective, but also confusing at times as there were so many and a few of their stories were very similar. I think Mottley did a great job, however, at fully fleshing out each character and making them feel real. Towards the 60% to 80% mark, things got a little muddled and perhaps a tad boring, but it was quickly picked up and everything that happened was important to the plot. The writing style helped amplify the emotions in each situation, and I think it really helped increase the relevancy in the book. Due to the slow-pacing of the previously mentioned section, I lowered my rating to 3 stars as I was struggling to continue to read. I honestly could see this becoming a modern classic in the future, and most classics are read for the message, not the “fun-ness” (and I rate books of my emjoyability reading them). Overall, I do recommend this book!

This was such an amazing story which pulled at my heart. The main characters were three young teenagers who were either pregnant or already had young children. Although everyone thought they were losers and sluts and worthless these girls supported each other and knew what they wanted from life. I loved it!
I voluntarily read and reviewed an advance copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

[Disclosure: Thank you to Knopf and NetGalley for offering this book for early review consideration]: On its surface, this novel is a tale of motherhood, sacrifice, and unfair societal assumptions about teenage mothers, but looking deeper, it encompasses so much more. In breathtakingly fresh language, Mottley crafts a tale of forgiveness, betrayal, girlhood and womanhood, and an essential story of a distinctly female existence. She captures in novel detail the subtleties that define the female experience, the pain of betrayal in lost friendships, the pressure for perfection in body and spirit, the sting of parental disapproval, and the saving grace of female friendship. The book offers several points of view, offering a glimpse from the perspective of a group of teenage mothers that calls itself “The Girls.” The Girls’ stories intersect and diverge; they find each other, find love, lose love, and ultimately cling to the promise of persistence and survival wrought through shared desire. Through Simone, Emory, and Adela’s shared and dissimilar experiences, Mottley brings the reader into a world many scorn, making this novel an essential work in a world which so often erases women’s pain. While the vernacular language sometimes grated on me, the novel is filled with exceptionally penned passages that will incite compassion in the most hard-hearted of readers. This is an utterly heartbreaking but essential story for our tumultuous times.

4.5 stars rounded up. This was so good— incredible writing, complicated characters, and a love letter to Florida and all of its complications. It was a little hard to keep the girls straight in the beginning, but overall I really enjoyed this story. The literary version of the movie The Florida Project.

I eagerly requested an ARC of this book because I was captivated by the author’s previous novel, Nightcrawling. However, this one fell short in comparison.

The number of young mothers in the book made it challenging to distinguish between them. I believe that if the chapters had alternated between two characters instead of three, I would have been able to follow the story easier.

Despite my fondness for Nightcrawling, I must admit that I lost interest in this book by the third trimester section.

Given this author’s young age, I’ll continue to keep an eye out for her future novels in hope that they work better for me.

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆.5/5 stars!!

Release Date: June 24, 2025

Thank you so so much to Netgalley and Leila Mottley for an ARC copy of The Girls Who Grew Big. It soared beyond my expectations of how this book would be.

The plot surrounds a group of girls living in Padua Beach, Florida. They've been shunned from their community for one similar reason: giving birth to a child at a young age. Through this story, we focus on three point of views: Simone, the "group leader" of the Girls with five-year-old twins; Emory, an especially new mother battling challenges with school and family; and Adela, a newly pregnant teen who was banished from her home and sent down to live with her grandma. All of them have their own story to tell.

I already knew from the start that I would not relate to this because I haven't faced the same challenges or experiences as the characters in this story. I probably wouldn't like the Girls myself without this story. Nevertheless, I felt like I could really connect to the characters and their struggles. Every story incorporated something important, and I learned stories of resilience, adapting to change, and acceptance. Also within the story, you begin to gain a sense of awareness to other reasons of teen pregnancy besides hormones.

This was a great book, and I would encourage anyone to pick this up if you're at all interested. Thank you so much again to Netgalley and Leila Mottley for the opportunity to read this book!

The Girls Who Grew Big is a powerful, poetic, and fiercely compassionate novel that redefines what it means to grow up, love hard, and survive in a world that misunderstands you. Leila Mottley’s sophomore novel is a stunning exploration of girlhood, motherhood, and the messy, beautiful terrain where the two intersect.

At the heart of the story is Adela Woods, a privileged teen abruptly displaced by an unplanned pregnancy and sent to live with her grandmother in Florida. What she finds in Padua Beach isn't just a change of scenery—it's a gritty, vibrant sisterhood of young mothers who call themselves the Girls. Each of them, from determined Emory to burdened-yet-resilient Simone, is a fully realized character with her own story, her own heartbreak, and her own fight. Their red truck becomes not just a mode of transportation but a symbol of freedom, defiance, and found family.

Mottley’s prose is lyrical and rich, with her signature rhythm and unflinching emotional depth. She paints the landscape of adolescence and motherhood with brutal honesty and aching beauty. Through the Girls, she challenges harmful stereotypes and questions who gets to be seen as “good” or “deserving” when it comes to motherhood and girlhood. The novel never shies away from the hard stuff—abandonment, poverty, shame—but it also pulses with moments of joy, solidarity, laughter, and growth.

What makes The Girls Who Grew Big so extraordinary is its refusal to pity or punish its characters. Instead, Mottley gives them grace. She lets them be messy, brave, vulnerable, and whole. There’s an emotional bigness to this story that sneaks up on you—a quiet strength that keeps echoing long after the last page.

This book is not just a coming-of-age story. It’s a coming-into-power story. Bold, tender, and utterly original, The Girls Who Grew Big is essential reading—especially for those who’ve ever felt underestimated, unseen, or written off. Leila Mottley has done it again.

When they say “it takes a village to raise a child,” they often forget to add that some are forced to build the villages they have. That’s what The Girls Who Grew Big is truly about; growing and holding onto your village when the world tries to dispose of you as a young mother.

This was such a raw and layered story about young motherhood, girlhood, class, generational trauma, shame, community, forgiveness, love, etc. I loved all three POVs from Simone (my fave), Emory, and Adela, who were written with so much nuance and complexity that you root for them despite some of their questionable choices lol. They dare you to judge them and hold up a mirror for you reflect as they share their stories.

The community these Girls built by turning their sameness and otherness into something so beautifully connected and safe was…wow. But I’m not surprised because Leila’s pen always had depth!!! Definitely recommend and I’ll continue to read anything this author writes!

I absolutely loved Leila Mottley’s new book! It’s a powerful coming-of-age story centered around three young women, each navigating the challenges of becoming a teenage mom. Told through their unique perspectives, the book explores their personal growth and resilience as they step into motherhood.
Each of them has been separated from their families due to the choices they’ve made, and throughout the story, you witness their transformation—emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. You’ll laugh with them, cry for them, and cheer them on every step of the way.
This book is raw, heartfelt, and deeply moving. A total must-read!

Mottley has a way of writing beautifully tragic books, with characters that feel so real and rich — this story is no exception. Wonderful read

When Adela gets unexpectedly pregnant as a 16-year-old with Olympic swimming dreams, her parents send their only child down to Padua Beach, Florida to wait out the pregnancy without anyone from their hometown finding out. There, she meets the Girls, a group of teenage moms who have banded together despite their town's rejection of them. Led by Simone, the first of the Girls who gave birth to twins four years ago, the Girls raise their children at the beach out of the bed of Simone's red truck. Simone guides each Girl through pregnancy, birth, and motherhood with her tried and true tips, acting as a new and improved What to Expect When You're Expecting, but for teenage girls.

The group consists of many young mothers, one of whom is Emory, a smart and devoted high school student committed to getting out of Padua Beach and going to college, something seemingly impossible with a newborn baby during her senior year of high school. When Adela shows up, her and Emory are mysteriously attracted to each other and Emory brings her to the Girls who show her the way to be honest with herself about her pregnancy and how her life is forever changed.

This book is about so much more than teen pregnancy and the sacrifices it takes to be a mother. It's about privilege, agency, and self-determination. The Girls each pave their own paths through various and unexpected ways, demonstrating that the one size fits all approach doesn't work for everyone. Getting crafty with your circumstances and staying true to what you want out of life is a crucial part of the stories of these Girls. This is the ultimate coming of age story for the three narrators, Simone, Emory, and Adela, where they all find the ability and freedom to decide their futures themselves.

Wow. Wow wow wow. This book blew me away. The way it was written, all three girls’ points of view to show their lives up to present, and their hopes for their future. A reminder that even now, when so much is accepted in the world, so much still isn’t. And when you’re not accepted for who you are, for the choices you’ve made, the only thing left might be the family you find and make your own.

All of those hopes and dreams, regrets and gratitude. All rolled into a big heap, and mixed within multiple people who all exist within each other.

I will shout from the rooftops for anyone I know to give this book a chance. I could not put it down, and when it was ending, all I wanted was for it to be longer. Amazing words, incredible stories, and undeniable talent to this author.