Books and Reading: Young Women Facing Challenges

Addie, a Catholic school girl, becomes pregnant. She finds herself asking if she can be a good Catholic if she choices to have an abortion.

Three girls who couldn't be more different from each other meet at a program for pregnant teens when the town's high school isn't an option. The girls soon learn how to rely on each other through the drama.

Gaby Rodriguez, whose mother and older sister both became pregnant as teenagers, explains what she learned from faking a pregnancy as a high school senior in order to find out how people would treat her.

n the summer of 1972, three girls from very different backgrounds struggle to come to terms with being pregnant.

Pregnant at fifteen, Mari Pujols believes the baby will supply the family love she yearns for but when she learns the fetus has a heart defect, her friends, sometimes boyfriend, and doctor are there for her

Being the middle child has its ups and downs. But for Grace, an only child who was adopted at birth, discovering that she is a middle child is a different ride altogether. After putting her own baby up for adoption, she goes looking for her biological family, including Maya, her loudmouthed younger bio sister, who has a lot to say about their newfound family ties

A young girl, convicted of murder as a child, serves her sentence only to be placed in a group home, where, upon her release, she must grapple with starting over and an unplanned pregnancy.

Alice was kidnapped when she was 10. She has suffered abuse at the hands of her captor for years, but before she can get free she has a find a replacement girl for her abuser.

Cassie's move to a new school, and invents a new self. She quickly gets in over her head as she begins using drugs, having sexual encounters, and drinking heavily.

Anke's story is told in verse. This form makes the terror that Anke's father instills in his family painfully clear.

Jack and his Ma are being held captive. Once they are able free themselves, they find the outside world almost as frightening as captivity.

Meredith was abused by her father. When he gets released from prison early her already shaky world is turned upside down.

Seventeen-year-old Gittel is waiting to learn who the match-maker will find for her. The waiting brings up her memories of the horrible abuse, and suicide, of her best friend years earlier.

A driven cheerleader confronts life and relationships following her sexual assault.

A traumatic event near the end of the summer has a devastating effect on Melinda's freshman year in high school.

After she is raped and murdered, fifteen-year-old Ellie Frias, who felt invisible in life, finds herself caught in Hollow Oaks, New York, observing other brutal attacks, the police investigation, and more

It is summer in Phoenix, and seventeen-year-old Maximo offers to help a Jordan, a fellow student in high school, with the food truck that belonged to Jordan's deceased father, and which may be the only thing standing between homelessness for Jordan and his mom; the boys are strongly attracted to each other, but as their romance develops it is threatened by the secrets they are hiding--and by the racism and homophobia of those around them

A novel in prose and verse that follows the experiences of a teen who finds courage in the story of a fifteenth-century avenger when her sister's rapist is set free without prison time

For years, Ava has struggled with the aftereffects of being sexually assaulted, including a scar on her face that reminds her of it daily. When Ava unexpectedly stumbles upon a secret no one was meant to find in the woods, she has to decide what to do.

When Zarin Wadia dies in a car crash with a boy named Porus, no one in her South Asian community in Jeddah is surprised—what else would you expect from a girl like that? A refreshingly nuanced narrative about gender in the Middle East.

When Mara's twin brother Owen is accused of rape by her friend Hannah, Mara is forced to confront her feelings about her family, her sense of right and wrong, a trauma from her past, and the future with her ex-girlfriend, Charlie.

Graduating from their school's special education program, Quincy and Biddy are placed together in their first independent apartment and discover unexpected things they have in common in the face of past challenges and a harrowing trauma

After being drugged and gang-raped while crashing a St. Andrew's Prep party on her sixteenth birthday, Jade leads her friends in exacting a horrific revenge on the golden boys who attacked her

When Indy is sent to stay in Nassau, trouble follows her and she must hide an unwanted pregnancy from her aunt, who would rather throw Indy out onto the street than see the truth. Completely broke with only a hand-me-down pregnancy book as a resource, Indy desperately looks for a safe space to call home.

Three misfits come together to avenge the rape of a fellow classmate and trigger a change in the misogynist culture at their high school transforming the lives of everyone around them in this searing and timely story.

It's been two years since the night that changed Ashley's life. Two years since she was raped by her brother's teammate. And a year since she sat in a court and watched as he was given a slap on the wrist sentence. But the years have done nothing to stop the pain.

Since his father's suicide, Will, sixteen, has mainly walked, worked at Dollar Only, and tried to replicate his father's cornbread recipe, but the rape of his childhood friend shakes things up.

An aspiring singer is taken advantage of by a superstar.

A lonely teenager exiled to a remote Vermont boarding school in the wake of a family tragedy must either surrender his sanity to the wild wolves inside his mind or learn that surviving means more than not dying.

A mixed-heritage dancer's coming of age within the African diaspora is shaped by abuse at the hands of a cousin, her mother's descent into addiction, and her father's efforts to create a Nigerian-inspired home in America.

When Grace and Gavin fall in love, Grace is sure it's too good to be true. She has no idea their relationship will become a prison she's unable to escape.

A novel in verse follows the experiences of fourteen-year-old Lilly, as an innocent flirtation turns into sexual abuse by a friend of her parents and she is tormented by her abuser's threat to ruin her family and her own desperate need for help.

Fifteen-year-old Janna Yusuf, a Flannery O'Connor-obsessed book nerd and the daughter of the only divorced mother at their mosque, tries to make sense of the events that follow when her best friend's cousin--a holy star in the Muslim community--attempts to assault her at the end of sophomore year.

Marie, the only black girl in the eighth grade willing to befriend her white classmate Lena, discovers that Lena's father is doing horrible things to her in private.

Kiko Himura yearns to escape the toxic relationship with her mother by getting into her dream art school, but when things do not work out as she hoped Kiko jumps at the opportunity to tour art schools with her childhood friend, learning life-changing truths about herself and her past along the way.

High school senior point guard Jonas Dolan is on the fast track to a basketball career until an unthinkable choice puts his future on the line"--Provided by publisher.

Charlie is released from a program meant to help her with self-harming behaviors. She moves to Tucson. There the art world introduces more dangers, but helps her find other outlets for her pain.

Lia is dealing with self-harm, disordered eating, and depression. Her fragile situation is made worse when her friend dies alone in a hotel room.

Walls recounts a childhood of danger living conditions, and frequent moves to avoid creditors.

When eighth-grader Sparrow wakes up in the hospital, she can’t convince the doctors or her mother that she wasn’t attempting suicide on the roof of her school. Once she starts seeing her therapist, she reveals that when she experiences anxiety, she becomes a real sparrow and flies with other birds.

Tiger, sixteen, has been pushing away from her overprotective mother, but when her mother dies suddenly Tiger must learn to live when it feels she is surrounded by darkness.

Paralyzed by grief, Moira feels punished when her parents send her to a therapeutic boarding school in Maine where she meets eleven other troubled girls and gradually begins to understand her parents' true intentions behind sending her there.

Aza Holmes is a young woman navigating daily existence within the ever-tightening spiral of her own thoughts.

When she learns that her mother is sick in Ohio, Mim confronts her demons on a thousand-mile odyssey from Mississippi that redefines her notions of love, loyalty, and what it means to be sane

A realistic depiction of Kristina's decent into meth addiction.

The story of five teens in an upscale drug rehab facility.

A captivating and powerful exploration of the opioid crisis--the deadliest drug epidemic in American history--through the eyes of a college-bound softball star.

This allegorical take on the opioid epidemic provides an utterly unique point of view on the lives of those struggling with drug dependencies. Surprisingly, this approach does not water down the stark realities besetting Ivy and Isaac as they sink into addiction.

From a child's-eye view, Travis Dandro recounts growing up with a drug-addicted birth father, alcoholic step-dad, and overwhelmed mother and details the effects of poverty and addiction on a family while maintaining a child's innocence for as long as he can.

E-book. Seventeen-year-old Charlotte Navarro gets addicted to her grandmother's pain pills, and as her addiction grows, she begins to question whether she can actually be hurting herself or others or whether it's just a harmless bit of fun.

A story told in letters between Natasha and her boyfriend, Antonio, who is in prison.

Hospitalized in Brooklyn, New York, fourteen-year-old Michelle recalls being raised in Philadelphia by a loving grandfather and drug-addicted mother before running away and getting lured into prostitution.

Fourteen-year-old LaVaughn accepts the job of baby-sitting Jolly's two small children but quickly realizes that the young woman, a seventeen-year-old single mother, needs as much help and nurturing as her two neglected children. The four become something akin to a temporary family, and through their relationship each makes progress toward a better life.

Attending a prestigious private prep school is like a dream come true for Shanequa. She tries to keep the truth about her drug addicted mother and incarcerated father a secret from her new classmates, but when the truth comes out, Shanequa's reaction could change her life forever.

Ten-tear-old Della has always had her older sister, Suki, but when Suki tries to kill herself, Della's world turns upside down. Maybe she's been quiet about the wrong things. Maybe it's time to be loud.

Moving to Vermont the summer after seventh grade, a young gymnast hides a secret as she makes new friends and investigates her grandmother's claim that someone is trying to destroy her cricket farm.

When boys in her class start touching seventh-grader Mila and making her feel uncomfortable, she does not want to tell her friends or mother until she reaches her breaking point.

In the touristy town of Cape Cod, eleven-year-old Owen faces a dilemma when his best friend Sean is sexually abused by a trusted adult, but warns Owen not tell anyone what is happening.