Imagine a woman who decides to numb herself with pills and sleep for a year. Or a woman convinced she will turn into a dog. Or a woman who falls in love with a merman. These are just a few examples of books in the weird girl fiction subgenre. But what exactly is this weird girl niche, and why is it so enormously popular? In this blog we will explain what this subgenre is and why you need to be reading it.

Microtrends in the book world are a thing

Every month, new bookish microtrends pop up on TikTok. Some stick around, others disappear after a few weeks or months. In the Lit Fic world sad girl literature made a splash a few months ago, featuring a gloomy (usually female) protagonist with a messy life, a failed career, and/or a disastrous love life. Lately, it’s weird girl fiction. In weird girl fiction, the unconventional woman is the protagonist, often not necessarily likeable and mentally unstable. The woman usually ends up in strange situations where reality and illusion blur together. The plot, and her life, is likely to spiral out of control. Weird girl fiction blends with horror and sci-fi at times and it’s not only just sad. It’s mostly surrealistic.

Weird girl fiction has always existed

The subgenre may now has a name, but it has actually existed for a long time. I especially see similarities between gothic novels and weird girl fiction. We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson is an example. In this story, we follow Merricat Blackwood, who lives in a castle with her sister Constance and Uncle Julian. There were once seven Blackwoods until, on a terrible night, a lethal dose of arsenic ended up in the sugar bowl. Constance was suspected of the murder. In short: a weird girl is central to the plot. And things are about to get weirder and weirder.

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, about the doomed love between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, also contains a dose of weird girl fiction. Catherine eventually marries Edgar Linton for social status and security, creating internal conflict and emotional unrest. The fact that she must choose between Edgar and Heathcliff drives her to madness. It’s not as overly weird as modern literature, but these classic works show that this niche genre was there all the time.

General Weird Girl Fiction

• My Year of Rest and Relaxation – Ottessa Moshfegh – about a girl who drugs herself and tries to sleep for a year
• Hard Copy – Fien Veldman – about a girl who starts talking to her printer
• Thistle – Nadia de Vries – Thistle is sexualised and objectified against her will, so she decides to turn the lens on herself
• Earthlings – Sayaka Murata – the most weird Japanese weird girl book you will ever read, but please check the trigger warnings
• Our Wives Under The Sea – Julia Armfield – a story of falling in love, loss, grief, and what life there is in the deep deep sea

Why weird girl fiction resonates now

Modern weird girl fiction explores how complex it is to be a woman today. We refuse to fit into a mold, choosing your own path, coping with mental health and obsessions. The Vegetarian by Han Kang, which won the Nobel Prize in Literature last year, tells the story of Yeong-Hye, who decides to stop eating meat. A radical choice in South Korea, but the FMC makes her own choice. After her husband leaves, she wants nothing more than to escape her existence by becoming a tree. The book comments on female obedience and independence, and on how a woman “should” behave, touching on feminism. It’s a relevant theme, which is why it resonates with a lot of women.

“Fictional eccentric women give me (…) comfort. Women constantly on the brink of a breakdown. Women making wrong decisions. Women who make mistakes. Lazy women. Women who are too much.” — Flemish author Julie Cafmeyer in De Morgen (translated quote)

Why weird girl fiction is perfect for spooky season

Weird girl fiction tends to cross into the horror genre, which is why it’s perfect to read this spooky season. Women who become something else, rooms filled with eyes or a girl and her mother in a tiny house in a forest. Creepy as hell! If you want to embrace the spooky season, but don’t love super scary horror books, try picking up a weird girl book instead.

Spooky weird girl fiction

• Night Bitch – Rachel Yoder – One day, the mother was a mother but then, one night, she was quite suddenly something else…
• The Eyes Are The Best Part – Monica Kim – Ji-won walks through bloody rooms full of eyes. Succulent blue eyes. Salivatingly blue eyes…
• The Lamb – Lucy Rose – Margot and Mama have lived by the forest since Margot can remember. When Margot isn’t at school, they spend quiet days together in their cottage, waiting for strangers to knock on their door. Strays, Mama calls them. Mama loves the strays. She feeds them wine, keeps them warm. Then she satisfies her burning appetite by picking apart their bodies.
• Bunny & We Love You, Bunny – Mona Awad – In Bunny, Samantha Heather Mackey, a lonely outsider student at a highly selective MFA program in New England, was first ostracized and then seduced by a clique of creepy-sweet rich girls who call themselves “Bunny.”
• The Book of X – Sarah Rose Etter – The Book of X tells the tale of Cassie, a girl born with her stomach twisted in the shape of a knot. From childhood with her parents on the family meat farm, to a desk job in the city, to finally experiencing love, she grapples with her body, men, and society, all the while imagining a softer world than the one she is in.

Why Weird Girl Fiction belongs on your TBR

The world at the moment can sometimes feels like an episode of Black Mirror or The Handmaid’s Tale. In Trumps America, where women’s rights are at stake, this subgenre particularly resonates. We search for guidance and find it in books. Whether it is in romantic stories where you can lose yourself for a while, or these strange books where you catch glimpses of yourself. Both exist. They are ways to simply cope with the unstable world of 2025 that can overwhelm you at times.

It is satisfying to read about women who go against the norm, who lose control, who simply are and pursue their desires. Weird girl fiction books about cannibalism often portrays a woman’s figurative and literal hunger and insatiable desire. Add a bizarre element, like a woman who wants to become a tree or turns into a dog, and I won’t leave the couch until the book is finished. Weird girl literature – I get the hype.