r/weirdgirlliterature

I used to have borderline personality disorder before I was formally diagnosed with ADHD (treatment helped a lot of the BPD symptoms).

I was obsessed with this book. The FMC carefully analyzes every single word, action, or behavior from her husband to test his loyalty and love to her. There are so many times in the book where it reminded me of my BPD days.

Not saying the FMC has a mental illness, and I’m not qualified to diagnose her obviously. But her behavior just reminded me so much of my lowest moments: the constant reassurance from a partner; expecting something from someone but not telling them this so you get upset when they don’t do it; the tunnel-vision obsession you have with a single human (or favorite person, in the BPD lingo).

I listened to the audiobook and loved the narration. It’s like 6 hours long if you find time to squeeze it in. Highly recommend it!

And I have no qualms about it at all. Out There by Kate Folk was one of my favorite reads of 2023, highly anticipating Sky Daddy. And I read the first couple pages of A Good Person at B&N when i went to go grab a copy of Sky Daddy and was immediately hooked.

I recently realised that the only horror(adjacent) books I enjoy are those that can be categorised as "femgore," which I would describe as featuring unhinged women that are able to reclaim autonomy to some extent or enact revenge through violence. In my opinion most, if not all, femgore is also weird girl lit so I wanted to share some recommendations here! I have limited it to one book per author, so would suggest checking out more of their bibliographies if any intrigue you.

I have recommended a lot of these in other contexts before, and some of these are not favourites, but I do think that are all worth checking out. Would love to hear your recommendations!

Unfortunately I have not been able to find the origin of this term, so if any of you know who coined it I would like to know.

Thankfully I’ve never lived in the US especially not during the pandemic. I’m Chinese though so I’m already plenty used to being called names and hearing what others have to say about people who look like me—but only really online, as I grew up in and continue to live in a majority Chinese community.

But it’s Cora’s anxiety and neurodivergence that speaks to me most, with how she doesn’t feel like a person, she doesn’t trust herself to make decisions because any time she ever makes a choice it’s always the wrong one somehow >!(the scene at the optometrist where she is still trying to answer the doctor “correctly”, even though that’s not at all how it works, hit me like a brick lmao cuz I do that too)!< and attempting to and failing miserably to mimic those around her

While I do love strong female leads I also appreciate when leads are wimpy and cry a lot and that doesn’t make them any less brave for still fighting and surviving.

I absolutely loved this book!! It grabbed my attention from the beginning but, I couldn’t put it down in the second half. Will have to read more of Hambrock’s work. Super unhinged!!!

The first three books will mainly make *me* feel like being the weird girl though, but I’m excited about them anyway!

super super super excited to get more into weird girl lit!!! 🙂‍↕️

Myrrh by Polly Hall. Took me a bit to get through it, truthfully. Not for lack of wanting to read it. Will be thinking of the ending for a bit, I think. Dunno if it would be weird girl horror but but I’m glad I finished it. Has anyone else read it?

I just want to say I think Anna Dorn is a hilarious troll for writing a book about astrology with mathematically impossible astrology charts. I choose to believe she's a troll and not that she was so careless that she made this shit up, did zero research or fact checking, and didn’t think anyone would notice. Either way, she’s playing in our faces in the best way.

This reminds me so much of our protagonist Emily who writes the Vice article in one go, doesn’t read it over, and hits send, she doesn’t care; she’s honestly pretty dumb (the SpaceX lies she didn’t fact check ) but thinks she is brilliant so she assumes no one will notice, and thinks those who will notice and will have a problem with it (people like me) are insufferable nerds.

I did not like the sudden rushed happy ending, throwing that audition at Emily? Come on. I choose to believe she was not cast because she probably has the affect of cardboard.

My heart breaks for Dawn. While Emily is oblivious to her severe flaws and the pain she causes others, Dawn is acutely aware of them and every waking moment attempts to “numb them out.”
I really hope she finds AA, she would be such a cool salt of the earth AA old timer. Dawn deserved the happy ending, not Emily.

Can we talk about WHY that professor was writing that book about incest though…… scary shit.

If you have suggestions for funny weird girl books similar to Exalted (aside from other Anna Dorn books, I've already requested those) PLEASE SHARE!!!

Pictured is my library haul with only a few "weird girl" books but wanted to share :))

(deleted and reposted because I messed up the photo before)

Has anyone read Out by Natsuo Kirino?? I’m absolutely hooked and I’m only about 30 pages in.

recent haul! some are from thriftbooks and some are from a local bookstore. i’ve only read a few weird girl books such as Yellowface, The Bell Jar, and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, but have been wanting to explore the sub genre some more. i’m currently reading Convenience Store Woman and awaiting on A Good Person from the library! :)

any other recommendations are greatly appreciated!

I made another post like this a couple of weeks ago (you can find it here) and since then a lot of other new(ish) or upcoming releases has caught my attention so I decided to compile them here again. A lot of these I have discovered through this sub and were suggestions on my previous post, so thank you!

Here is a bit of information about each book, mostly excerpts from the blurbs:

• Sublimation by Isabel J. Kim:

The border cuts you in two. When you immigrate, you leave a copy of yourself behind, an instance. One person enters their new country; the other stays trapped at home.

How far would you go to live the choice you didn’t make?

• Decomposition Book by Sara Van Os:

An emotional, electrifying, and darkly hilarious debut about a woman who finds a dead body and can’t give up its ghost.

• Skin Contact by Elisa Faison:

Unmoored by her mother's sudden death, Frances has never felt so diminished, or so old. She's painfully aware that strangers no longer look at her the same way - and that she's now, at thirty-two, older than the great aunt for whom she was named, who was killed in the seventies under mysterious circumstances involving an extramarital affair. 

Nerve Damage by Annakeara Stinson:

A riotous revenge novel about a woman’s quest to escape her stalker ex-boyfriend—by stalking him herself.

• Offseason by Avigayl Sharp:

A blisteringly funny and transcendently deranged debut novel following a young woman who takes a job at an all-girls boarding school in a small coastal town to teach English literature—and to try, desperately, to escape the trap that is herself.

• Debt by L.A. Warman:

A lesbian sleeps her way through New York City, accumulating debts in each sexual transaction, until falling in love forces her to confront power, money, and reliance in this daring, poetic exploration of modern love.

(A little sidetrack, sorry. I posted about this in this sub before because I was so excited when it was announced as I love the authors previous books. It got a lot of downvotes which is not something I have experienced before in this sub and I can't really figure out why?? Do any of you have any thoughts on it?)

• Home Sick by Rhiannon Grist:

After a violent incident at work, Tamsin goes looking for a fresh start in a remote cottage far away from her old life. Here she could make real friends, find a job she loves, become a whole new person, even. But the solitary cottage is actually a semi-detached, with only a thin wall separating her from a total stranger. Her neighbour is an enigma. Dowdy one moment, vivacious the next, but always wearing an unnerving smile. Tamsin can’t shake the feeling that there’s something wrong with her, especially when she starts experiencing disturbances in her own home.

• Nymph by Sofia Montrone:

This jaw-dropping debut revels in the exuberant highs and awkward lows of girlhood and captures the universal experiences of trying to hold on to what is elusive, to deny what cannot be faced, and to say what cannot be said.

Edit: fixed spelling.

I’ve searched this sub for discussions on this book and surprised it’s not mentioned. One of the weirdest books I’ve read and still think about it years later. It’s a horror, so some trigger warnings here.

trying to find boring asian female and kobo came up with the craziest options love you girl but no 😭

EDIT: i’m reported today. i had to send an email to a generic email :/ i’ll keep y’all updated

Using the “Hot take” flair for this post, but to me this shouldn’t be a hot take. Two years ago I noticed a pattern in my reading (well, my partner actually did). He said: “you read and buy books by women exclusively, is that intentional?” And while back then it wasn’t, now it’s 100% true. And the more I lean into it the more I think it’s the best thing I’ve done for actually understanding the world. Women writers keep handing me takes on the huge universal stuff (power, fear, desire, motherhood, just staying alive) that I don’t seem to get anywhere else.

Dystopia is the clearest case. The male-canon version is almost always one brave guy who wakes up, sees the system for what it is, and goes off to fight it. The women-authored version rarely does that. The Handmaid’s Tale, The Memory Police, I Who Have Never Know Men, those books are about what it feels like to actually live inside the oppression. How you adapt to it, and what it takes from you without anyone calling it a tragedy. Offred doesn’t lead a revolution, she survives and she remembers. Ogawa’s narrator watches things vanish from the world and from her own head and just keeps going. There’s no heroic overthrow coming in any of these, there’s just the daily work of enduring it, and to me that’s so much closer to how oppression has actually worked for women more or less forever. And on the rare occasion a woman in one of these books does pick up the sword, she tends to get written into a shape the genre inherited from men, which honestly makes my point for me.

Same goes for sexuality, relationships, motherhood, career, being an artist. When a woman writes desire, or the ugly ambivalent side of being a mother, or the power struggles inside a relationship, it comes from inside the experience instead of being watched from across the room. Ferrante on the parts of motherhood you’re not supposed to admit out loud (The Lost Daughter, The Days of Abandonment. The Neapolitan Quartet). Moshfegh on wanting to check out of your own life entirely (MYORR, Eileen). Rachel Yoder literally turning a mom into a dog in Nightbitch. None of it is tidy or flattering, which is exactly why it rings true and why it speaks to me. We are bombarded with impossible standards and expectations, and it’s really refreshing to read about the experiences of other women who refuse to accept this.

To be clear I don’t think men shouldn’t be read, or that no man can write a convincing woman (a few really can. Who in your opinion would that be?). It’s more that reading women only has rewired how I see basically everything. Anyone else here read this way, on purpose or by accident? And did it change what you notice?

Adding a photo of one of my shelves.