From the author of Oprah’s Book Club pick and New York Times best seller Nightcrawling, here is an astonishing new novel about the joys and entanglements of a fierce group of teenage mothers in a small town on the Florida panhandle.

Adela Woods is sixteen years old and pregnant. Her parents banish her from her comfortable upbringing in Indiana to her grandmother’s home in the small town of Padua Beach, Florida. When she arrives, Adela meets Emory, who brings her newborn to high school, determined to graduate despite the odds; Simone, mother of four-year-old twins, weighs her options when she finds herself pregnant again; and the rest of the Girls, a group of outcast young moms who raise their growing brood in the back of Simone’s red truck.

The town thinks the Girls have lost their way, but really they are finding it: looking for love, making and breaking friendships, and navigating the miracle of motherhood and the paradox of girlhood.

Full of heart and life and hope, set against the shifting sands of these friends’ secrets and betrayals, The Girls Who Grew Big confirms Leila Mottley’s promise and offers an explosive new perspective on what it means to be a young woman.

There are some books that just land at the right moment in your life, and this book was exactly that for me. I’d seen a lot of early buzz about it on Bookstagram, and was definitely curious, but I wasn’t prepared for how much this book would move and inspire me.

The story is told through the eyes of three young women, Simone, Adela, and Emory, all young girls navigating teen motherhood in a small Florida town. The narrative shifts between them smoothly and without confusion, something that can be tricky in multi-POV novels but is handled flawlessly here. In this case, each voice is distinct, fully formed, and full of purpose.

Adela, banished to Florida by her conservative family after becoming pregnant, arrives in Padua Beach a little unsure of what happens next. She meets Emory, who’s juggling school and raising a newborn, and Simone, already a mother of twins and facing another pregnancy. The three of them become “the Girls”, a collective of young moms who, for better or worse, are there for each other. They may not have all the answers, but they’ll have each other’s backs in the end. Together, they form a patchwork family full of defiance, tenderness, and sharp edges, learning how to survive when others in their lives have turned against them.

What really stood out to me (and what I loved the most)was that none of these girls are painted as victims. Life hasn’t been easy for any of them, but they’re not stuck. They’re brave. They move with intention. They mess up, they push each other’s buttons, and they show up again and again—for their kids, for their friends, for themselves. Sure, there are a few missteps and a surprise betrayal or two, but they always correct course. The resilience here is inspiring. There’s no pity party. Just young women pushing forward with all the complexity and contradiction one would expect from young people trying to learn how to be adults.

Mottley’s prose is beautiful, poetic, and at times raw, but always grounded. There’s such care in the way she writes these characters. She doesn’t romanticize teen motherhood, but she doesn’t reduce it either. She lets these girls breathe and feel. They’re alive and complex. She lets them be tough, scared, loving, angry, hopeful. And because of that, the story has emotional weight without ever becoming preachy or cliché.

I listened to the audiobook while also reading, and each character is narrated by a different voice actor. The narration is superb and I felt like each actor perfectly captured their respective character beautifully. If you’re an audiobook lover, definitely check this one out.

If you’re looking for a story about determined young women who are finding their own way and rewriting what strength looks like, this is the one. The characters are unforgettable, and the story hits all the right emotional notes. This is the perfect summer read and one that will leave you thinking about it for a while.