4.5/5. Loved the prose and setting and the voices of the 3 narrators. This is a great coming of age litfic novel.

Title: The Girls Who Grew Big
Author: Leila Mottley
Published: June 24th, 2025

I didn’t know what to expect when I started 'The Girls Who Grew Big'. At first, I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about a story this heavy, about girls who are still so young, already pregnant or raising babies, and completely on their own. But somewhere between the pain and the quiet strength of their stories, I found myself deeply attached.

In the beach town of Padua, Florida, Simone, Adela, Emory, and others are shunned by their families, by society, sometimes even by themselves. They’re just trying to survive. And in the middle of all that hurt, they find something real: each other.

There’s no sugarcoating here. This book doesn’t look away. It shows the fear, the isolation, the bittersweet moments of friendship and hope. It’s hard to read at times, but by the end, I felt like I’d lived something important with them. I hurt for them. I wanted to wrap them in a hug and tell them they aren’t alone.

Thank you to Knopf Publishing for the egalley of this book. It’s raw, it’s real, and it stays with you.

This book follows three young women and their motherhood journey in the Florida panhandle.

Simone, the first of the group to become a mother, has 4 year old twins and has created a safe space for Girls like her in their small town in the back of her pick up truck.

Emory, has a 3 week old son and Adela was just sent to town to live with her grandmother while she carries out her pregnancy and gives her baby up for adoption before going back home to her parents in Indiana.

Each girl’s story is different, but they are the same in a lot of ways. Pregnant at a young age, turned away or not supported from their families and in need of a village.

They find the village with each other. In the back of the truck, with The Girls.

Mottley’s prose is so beautiful and her characters are so raw. They aren’t perfect but they are real. She writes about young people with grace and empathy and you really grow to feel for her characters.

I loved her debut novel Nightcrawling and I think I loved this one more.

Thanks to #netgalley, the publisher and the author for a copy of the e-arc.

Go grab this book. It’s all consuming and so so good. It’s out now!

I’ve definitely been drawn to stories about motherhood since giving birth two years ago and this might be one of the most unique ones I’ve read. Told during the three trimesters and from three different POVs, we see three young women struggle with motherhood, pregnancy, relationships and their sense of self and purpose. Simone, Emory and Adelia each felt very relatable in different ways to me and I felt so seen. There were certainly times they each made decisions that frustrated me, but I still was rooting for each girl to succeed and be the best mom/person they could be. I liked how the book really showed how family doesn’t necessarily mean blood and the importance of community. It definitely deals with some very tough topics, but I felt like each was fine in a very realistic and caring way. I’m very glad it read it!
CW: pregnancy, abortion, racism, sexual assault, child injury

Thank you NetGalley and Knopf for the digital reader’s copy!

Compelling story! Centering on 3 young women residing in Padua Beach Florida. These girls each have their own back story although they are almost all in the same situation. Babies having babies, mistreated and shunned, having to find their own way. Simone is the oldest, raising her twins on her own, still finding the time and heart to help others. Emory, raising baby Kai, who had hopes and dreams of a brilliant future. Lastly,Adela sent away from her family to give birth and ending up finding her roots.
Together they deal with heartbreak and betrayal while discovering the strength within themselves .
Highly recommend. Thank you netgalley and Knopf publishing

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf Publishing for an ARC.

What a mesmerizing story. A coming of age story for a group of pregnant teen mothers, I was so impressed how Mottley made me fall in love with all these flawed but wonderful characters. They are all crazy fleshed out and I loved watching them through their story.

4.5
Loved this story… about the Girls..
a group of young pregnant teens in the coastal town of Padua Beach, Florida.
The story focuses mostly on three of them..

Simone, a Black girl who’s mother made her leave home when she got pregnant..her religious ways making her think badly of her… delivers a set of twins and lives in the back of her boyfriend’s beater truck on the beach where she delivered her babies..and the Girls all gather there with her.. with their own babies sleeping there too..

Emory.. a White girl, in high school ..very smart, probable scholarships coming her way.. has a new baby boy with Simone’s brother.. lives with her grandparents who have somewhat shunned her and won’t let the Black father of her baby come around..

Adela….Biracial, high school student and hopeful Olympian in swimming who
Is sent to her Grandmother’s in Florida, by her wealthy parents to wait out the pregnancy and give up her baby then return home…

Such a beautiful bond these girls have.. a safety net for each other, as they endure all the problems they have to deal with..they find a family together and help each other.


Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf for the Arc!

Available now!

Adela, Simone, and Emory are each dealing with pregnancy in their own way, but they are bonded together by their actions once Adela arrives to their small town. This character-driven story started off strong and the author has a wonderful way with words, but halfway through I had grown bored. The pacing was a bit too slow and needed a few more bigger moments.

Set against the backdrop of a bleak southern town steeped in conservative values, this novel is a poignant exploration of teen pregnancy, ambition, and survival. It’s not a romanticized tale—it’s the opposite. What unfolds is a raw, unflinching portrait of what it means to mother while still being a child yourself.
The characters are heartbreakingly real: young girls caught between the ache to be loved and the burning desire for something more. Their fight to excel—academically, emotionally, spiritually—is laced with determination and grit. What emerges is a story that speaks to the quiet power of female friendship and the communities that form when the world seems set against you. It’s about the strength found in solidarity, the courage to dream beyond what you’ve been given, and the bittersweet beauty of growing up too fast.

Pregnant sixteen year old, Adela Woods is sent from Indiana to her grandmother's home in Padua Beach, Florida. There, she meets Emory, a new mom determined to finish high school, and Simone, a mother of twins considering another pregnancy. Adela joins their group, known simply as "The Girls," who are young outcast mothers who support each other after most of their loved ones have written them off. While the town sees them as lost, these girls are actually finding their way, navigating love, friendship, and the complexities of being both mothers and young women.

Well..... I can guarantee you that this book will land somewhere in my top 10 books of 2025. I absolutely loved this book. It is a beautiful and complex character driven examination of young motherhood, and how society treats teenage pregnancy as one of the most abhorrent and shameful things that could ever happen to a young woman. Leila Mottley knocks it out of the park with her sophomore novel, and I had very high expectations because I also loved her debut, Nightcrawling. The found family component of this book had me in an absolute chokehold, as these girls navigated the complexities of raising children, while still being children themselves. It absolutely ripped my heart out while simultaneously highlighting strength and perseverance that the characters were forced to find. Additionally, the intersection of race and socioeconomic statis were explored, and how those identities play a significant role in how pregnant teens are viewed, and how they access support. Told in 3 alternating perspectives, each of the 3 narrators were so well developed and I was fully invested in their journeys, and oftentimes I felt like this fictional story mirrors some peoples' real lives experiences.

Favorite Quote: "I was gonna make a whole lotta people suffocate on the echo of their own words. I was going to do it all."

4.5 stars rounded up. If you have not had a chance to read one of Mottley's novels, you really must. The prose is astounding. "We also knew what it was to expand beyond what you believed of yourself." A story of love and friendship, heartbreak and strength, you will never look at teen mothers the same way again.

"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."

Thanks to NetGalley and Knopf Pantheon Vintange & Anchor for the free ARC in exchange for my honest review. All opinions expressed herein are my own.

In her sophomore effort after the debut hit “Nightcrawling,” Mottley focuses on a loose gang of teenage mothers who, shamed and shunned by society and castoff by their families, create a makeshift family in the small Florida panhandle town of Padua Beach. The novel opens with a flashback of the “Girls’” default leader, Simone, giving birth at age sixteen in the bed of a truck to twins with the “assistance” of her 22 year-old boyfriend, Tooth, whose only contribution is a dirty knife to cut the umbilical cords. The book then moves forward five years with Simone and her twins, Luck and Lion, still unhoused and Simone facing another unwanted pregnancy. Simone is a ferocious mother despite her precarious situation. She also tends to the Girls, helping them to negotiate new motherhood, such as showing Emory, the only white girl in the group, how to nurse her baby when her breast pump broke.

Emory became pregnant at seventeen and, although she had planned the pregnancy, within days of the birth “I would’ve done just about anything to reverse it.” Her grandparents who raised her when her mother dropped her off in an opioid-fueled haze when she was just five, are shamed that Emory ”let that Black boy knock me up.” Although Jay shows interest in his son, Emory, who is at the top of her class, has “bigger dreams than Jay and his horny a**” She plans to graduate high school and attend college, but her school guidance counselor wants her to readjust her expectations, concluding, “You made some choices, Miss Reid, and those choices have consequences. Yours is that you’re probably not gonna go to college, at least not anytime soon, and certainly not to any school where you’d be living on campus.”

Sixteen year old Adela, a competitive swimmer with aspirations to attend Stanford and win gold in the 2028 Olympics, is sent to Florida to hole up with her supportive grandmother until she gives birth, leaving “with as much speed and downturned eyes as I had arrived.” Despite her athletic achievements, with the pregnancy, Adela “was a thing to be hidden. Forgotten.” Adela is interested in twenty-seven year old Chris, a handsome lifeguard and absent father, but she is concerned that “[c]rushes and dates and the allure of want were for girls who hadn’t already wasted their desire on boys who trampled over them and disappeared, leaving us with nothing but school transfers and staggering nausea.”

In beautiful prose, Mottley presents a fresh and unsettling look at coming-of-age and motherhood. With women’s rights being curtailed and an administration urging women to bear more children, it is particularly horrific to witness how Mottley’s characters are “the country’s favorite scapegoat,” with society favoring those addicted to fentanyl rather than a teen mom, and family turning away when these teenagers needed family the most. What could have been an “after school special” under the stewardship of a lesser writer is a luminous tale with sharply drawn characters and a distinctive perspective as written by the literary trailblazer. Thank you Knopf and Net Galley for an advanced copy of this unforgettable novel.

I'm not normally one to read books about motherhood but I loved Leila Mottley's Nightcrawling so I knew I had to read The Girls Who Grew Big. Mottley has such a way with developing characters and making you dive deep into their lives and The Girls Who Grew Big is no exception.

Tackling so many complicated subjects that it's amazing it didn't come across as trying to be too topical, The Girls Who Grew Big is about teenage mothers in a small Florida town and how they create community and look for support. Mottley tackles big issues in such a careful way and readers of The Girls Who Grew Big will be left thinking about it long after they've finished. One of the best books I've read all year.

The Girls Who Grew Big embodies the lives of teen girls navigating the challenges of the unexpected in a gritty, authentic way. I enjoyed this day-in-the-life exposé as our girls divulged their thoughts and feelings through their special, yet not all that unique journeys. Mottley does a great job of scrubbing of the rose-colored glasses and giving us the raw truth teen pregnancy carries, especially in the conservative south. Overall, I very much enjoyed this story and the opportunity to put myself in the shoes of such resilient young women, remembering that not long ago I found myself in a similar world full of unknowns and scary circumstances.

Thank you, NetGalley for the advanced copy of The Girls Who Grew Big!

Wow! The so-called "Sophomore Slump" is definitely not a problem for Leila Mottley! Mottley's second novel, "The Girls Who Grew Big" is just as breathtaking as her debut, "Nightcrawling." The story of young mothers, girls really, who find support and companionship in each other, this novel is raw and real. It doesn't shy away from difficult topics, facing head on subjects such as teen motherhood, abortion, sexual abuse and exploitation, poverty, and racism. It will make you question what we view as conventional life and will make you uncomfortable at times. This devastatingly powerful story will linger long after you read the final page, and I know I will not soon forget the trials and triumphs of its characters, who come vibrantly alive from the pages. "The Girls Who Grew Big" is a beautiful portrayal of a different kind of "happily ever after," one that mainstream society may not view as ideal, but happy nonetheless, where family is not always blood, and blood is not always family.

Many thanks to NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for the incredible privilege of reading an advanced copy of this phenomenal book. Five stars!

Leila Mottley is back, better than ever with The Girls Who Grew Big. A phenomenal, beautifully written, highly emotional novel. I absolutely loved the author’s debut Nightcrawling, and was super excited to read her latest effort. This astounding story was so very relatable for me. I could not put this book down from the very beginning. I can remember being young, pregnant and struggling to find my way right after graduating from high school. The intense raw emotions of feeling scared, ashamed, judged and worried all the time. The only difference in my own story is that I went on to marry my child’s father, and we were able to build a life together. A huge thank you to Knopf, the author and NetGalley for the opportunity to read the eARC of the book.

The Girls Who Grew Big is a profoundly moving, engrossing, rich character driven story about girlhood, motherhood, pregnancy, generational trauma, community, finding an excepting village, forgiveness and ultimately self love.

When 16 year old Adela finds herself pregnant, her parents send her to go live with her Grandmother in a small town in Florida until her baby is born. Once she is there she meets Simone and Emory both with their own stories of pregnancy and motherhood. These young girls form an unbreakable bond of sisterhood that transcends all the scrutiny, shame, and judgment that has been placed upon them. Through their own experiences, and struggles they learn to love themselves, support and lift each other up, to choose their children and love one another fiercely.

Leila Mottley is a powerful voice in the literary world. She writes raw, captivating, realistic stories that make you feel every single emotion, and that truly stay with you long after you have finished reading the book. The Girls Who Grew Big is a mesmerizing, lyrical masterpiece that should be at the top of everybody’s reading list. I highly recommend this book.

A beautifully written, empathetic portrait of teen moms navigating life in a small Florida town. Mottley's poetic voice shines, and even without having read her debut, I think this one will leave a strong impression on readers. (And now I definitely need to read Nightcrawling!)

The Girls Who Grew Big is the sophomore follow up from Leila Mottley was a 4 star read for me and a book that I would press into a lot of readers hands but it does fall short of the brilliance of Nightcrawling.

From the blurb "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."

This is a really well crafted story that touches deftly on the struggles that teen/young moms face from several angles. The characters are flawed and make terrible decisions and feel so real. I continue to wonder that if I hadn't read Nightcrawling would I have loved this one more and I don't have an answer. While well written, this books lacks the unique cadence and lyricism that made Nightcrawling so unique - Mottley flexing her poetry muscles to great effect. Here the writing is more mundane, the characters more difficult to embrace. It's still very good but there was a magic to Nightcrawling, imo and here there is simply a really well written story.

Our cast is a pregnant island of misfit toys with a Florida panhandle surrounding cast that feels very organic. I really loved the way Mottley showed multiple viewpoints to similar issues without anointing one way as The Way. There are obviously going to be tough sections in this one, it is about a pack of pregnant teens after all, but it is worth the read. These young women are flawed but fierce - challenged but capable. You will think a lot about these girls and the kids and it will stay with you. I suspect that this would be a really interesting book club pick. I would recommend that you read both of her books and I will be looking forward to Mottley's next - as should you.


Thanks to NetGalley and Knopf for the ARC of this book in exchange for my honest feedback.. #netgalley #bookstagram #TheGirlsWhoGrewBig

Title: The Girls Who Grew Big
Author: Leila Mottley
Publisher: Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor | Knopf
Reviewed By: Arlena Dean
Rating: Four
Review:
"The Girls Who Grew Big" by Leila Mottley

My Insight:

"The Girls Who Grew Big" is a profoundly moving and captivating tale that follows the lives of three young teenage mothers in a small Florida town. Each mother brings a unique perspective shaped by her distinct upbringing, creating a rich tapestry of experiences. The narrative delves deeply into the complexities of pregnancy, birth, motherhood, abortion, and miscarriage, woven together with heartfelt prose that resonates long after you turn the final page. The author paints vivid portraits of these young women's struggles and triumphs, allowing readers to feel their joy, sorrow, and resilience. However, given its sensitive subject matter, this poignant story may not resonate with everyone; therefore, it's essential to consider whether it aligns with your reading preferences.

Thank you, NetGalley and Knopf, for providing me with an eARC copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

The Girls Who Grew Big by Leila Mottley is a breathtaking, gut-wrenching tribute to girlhood, motherhood, and the raw truth of growing up too soon. Weeks after reading it, I still find myself weeping at the ceiling, wrecked by its honesty and beauty. Mottley captures the fierce bonds of young mothers navigating betrayal, love, and survival with stunning grace. It's a story that inspired me, infuriated me, and made me yearn for the future. If you're looking for something real, radiant, and unforgettable—this is it. Don't miss its release on June 24th, 2025. THANK YOU TO NETGALLEY AND KNOPF, PANTHEON, VINTAGE, AND ANCHOR FOR AN ARC. All thoughts and opinions are my own