Leila Mottley’s sophomore novel arrives like a salt-tinged breeze from the Florida Panhandle, carrying with it the raw authenticity that made her debut Nightcrawling a Booker Prize finalist and Oprah’s Book Club selection. In The Girls Who Grew Big, Mottley shifts her lens from Oakland’s streets to the forgotten shores of Padua Beach, crafting a narrative that pulses with the same unflinching honesty while exploring entirely new emotional terrain.
The story opens with sixteen-year-old Adela Woods being exiled from her comfortable Indianapolis suburb to her grandmother’s weathered house in Florida’s Panhandle. Her crime? Pregnancy. Her parents’ solution? Nine months of invisibility followed by adoption and a return to life as if nothing happened. But Mottley understands that such neat erasures are impossible when girls become mothers, when bodies expand beyond the boundaries others have drawn for them.
The Sacred Geography of Girlhood
Padua Beach as Character and Sanctuary
Mottley transforms the fictional Padua Beach into more than mere setting—it becomes a character breathing with its own rhythms. The town exists in that liminal space between land and sea, between judgment and acceptance, where young mothers like Simone have carved out their own village in the back of a red pickup truck. The author’s prose transforms mundane locations—McDonald’s parking lots, community pools, the dune lake—into sacred spaces where these girls discover themselves.
The geographical metaphors run deep throughout the novel. Just as the coastline shifts with each tide, so do the lives of these young women. Mottley writes with particular power about water—from Adela’s competitive swimming background to the ocean that serves as both threat and sanctuary. The beach where Adela ultimately gives birth becomes a baptismal font, washing away old narratives about teenage motherhood and replacing them with something far more complex and beautiful.
The Truck as Mobile Sanctuary
Simone’s red pickup truck functions as perhaps the novel’s most powerful symbol. More than transportation, it serves as nursery, conference room, and refuge. Mottley’s descriptions of the Girls gathering in its bed—breastfeeding, sleeping, sharing stories—transform what could be seen as poverty into intentional community. The truck becomes their chosen family’s hearth, mobile and adaptable, refusing to be contained by society’s expectations.
Three Voices, One Chorus: Character Development That Soars
Adela: The Swimmer Learning to Float
Adela’s journey from privileged athlete to Padua Beach resident reads like a reverse fairy tale, where the princess discovers her kingdom was actually a prison. Mottley captures the specific anxiety of high-achieving teens who find their carefully plotted futures derailed. Adela’s relationship with water—from chlorinated pools to the Gulf’s untamed waves—serves as a metaphor for her evolving understanding of control and surrender.
In “The Girls Who Grew Big,” the author excels at showing how Adela’s initial judgment of the Girls gradually transforms into recognition of their wisdom. Her romance with Chris (Tooth) reveals Mottley’s sharp eye for the dynamics of age-inappropriate relationships, handling the subject matter with nuance that avoids both melodrama and oversimplification.
Emory: Academic Ambition Meets Maternal Love
Emory’s character arc provides some of the novel’s most compelling tension. Her determination to attend college while mothering Kai creates a narrative that refuses easy answers. Mottley skillfully navigates the complexity of Emory’s feelings—her love for her son existing alongside grief for her lost future, her attraction to Adela complicating her relationship with Jayden.
The author’s handling of Emory’s sexuality deserves particular praise. Rather than treating her realization as a dramatic revelation, Mottley weaves it naturally into the fabric of Emory’s self-discovery. The bachelorette party sequence, where Emory finds herself in a hidden queer bar in the woods, pulses with authentic emotion and serves as a powerful metaphor for finding yourself in unexpected places.
Simone: The Maternal Revolutionary
Simone emerges as the novel’s beating heart, a young woman who has transformed trauma into strength and isolation into community. At twenty, she carries the weight of experience that allows her to guide other girls through their own transformations. Her decision to seek an abortion after discovering her third pregnancy adds crucial complexity to the novel’s exploration of choice and agency.
Mottley refuses to sentimentalize Simone’s struggles. Her relationship with Tooth is portrayed with unflinching honesty—the way trauma bonds can masquerade as love, how young women often mistake intensity for intimacy. The scene where Simone performs her own abortion using herbs found in Adela’s grandmother’s collection ranks among the novel’s most powerful, handling the subject with respect for both the character’s agency and the gravity of her choice.
Narrative Technique: When Structure Mirrors Theme
The Pregnancy Trimester Framework
Mottley’s decision to structure the novel around pregnancy trimesters creates a natural rhythm that mirrors the characters’ emotional development. The “First Trimester” introduces uncertainty and nausea—both literal and metaphorical. The “Second Trimester” brings a deceptive calm before the final section’s intense labor and delivery. This structure allows readers to experience the physical and emotional journey alongside the characters.
Multiple Perspectives as Community Building
The shifting perspectives between Adela, Emory, and Simone create a chorus effect that reinforces the novel’s themes about chosen family and mutual support. Rather than competing for narrative attention, these voices harmonize, each adding depth to the others’ stories. The communal sections, written in first-person plural, feel like a natural extension of this technique.
The Author’s Evolving Voice
From Nightcrawling to New Territories
Readers familiar with Mottley’s debut will recognize her gift for rendering marginalized voices with dignity and complexity, but The Girls Who Grew Big showcases significant evolution in her craft. Where Nightcrawling focused on individual survival, this novel explores community building. The prose feels more expansive, matching the open skies and endless waters of its Florida setting.
The dialogue sparkles with authenticity, capturing distinct regional voices without resorting to caricature. Mottley’s ear for the rhythms of teenage speech—the way vulnerability hides behind bravado, how intimacy develops through shared silences—demonstrates her growing mastery of character development.
Critical Considerations and Minor Turbulence
Pacing Challenges in the Middle Third
While the novel’s opening and conclusion surge with energy, the middle section occasionally feels weighted down by the complexity of managing three distinct storylines. Some readers may find Adela’s relationship with Chris frustrating in its repetitive nature, though this likely reflects the realistic patterns of young women trapped in unhealthy relationships.
Balancing Realism with Hope
Mottley walks a careful line between acknowledging the real challenges faced by young mothers and avoiding despair. While generally successful, there are moments where the resolution feels perhaps too neat, particularly regarding family reconciliations. However, these quibbles pale beside the novel’s overall achievement.
Literary Kinship and Recommended Reading
The Girls Who Grew Big joins a growing constellation of novels that center young women’s experiences with complexity and respect. Readers might consider it alongside:
- Jess Walter’s Beautiful Ruins for its multi-perspective storytelling
- Brit Bennett’s The Mothers for its exploration of young Black women’s choices around pregnancy
- Rivers Solomon’s Sorrowland for its radical reimagining of motherhood
- Ashley C. Ford’s Somebody’s Daughter for its unflinching look at family trauma and healing
- Angie Thomas’s The Hate U Give for its authentic teenage voice
Final Verdict: A Novel That Expands Hearts and Minds
The Girls Who Grew Big succeeds brilliantly in its mission to humanize young mothers, transforming them from cautionary tales into complex individuals worthy of empathy and respect. Mottley’s prose flows like the tides that shape her characters’ lives—sometimes gentle, sometimes forceful, always moving toward something essential.
The novel’s greatest strength lies in its refusal to sentimentalize its subjects while maintaining deep compassion for their struggles. These girls don’t need rescuing—they need recognition of their strength, wisdom, and capacity for love. Mottley provides that recognition with grace and power.
Like the sand that forms Padua Beach’s foundation—created over millions of years from eroded Appalachian quartz—this novel reveals how strength can emerge from pressure, how beauty can arise from breakdown. It’s a book that lingers in the mind like salt air, reminding readers of the ocean’s endless capacity for both destruction and renewal.
- Full disclosure: I received an advance copy of The Girls Who Grew Big from the publisher, much like finding an unexpected treasure washed up on Padua Beach’s shores—a gift that demanded nothing but honest reflection in return.
