The Girls Who Grew Big had me gripped from the very first page and never let me go. Set in a small coastal town in the Florida panhandle, it follows the fortunes of three young women, Adela, Emory and Simone – part of a group of teenage mothers known as The Girls – as they navigate desire, friendship, poverty, motherhood, their own ambitions and the community’s disdain for them. Told in lyrical prose, and filled with characters who positively leap off the page, The Girls Who Grew Big is shot through with the ferocity of a mother’s love, proving that Mottley’s much-feted debut Nightcrawling was no fluke.
The Girls Who Grew Big by Leila Mottley, (List Price: $28, Knopf, 9780593801123, June 2025)
Reviewed by Jude Burke-Lewis, Square Books in Oxford, Mississippi