Witchy, Weird Girl YA Books

Gloria Muñoz is the author of They Called Us Wicked, out now from Holiday House. Below, she recommends three more witchy, weird-girl YA novels. As a speculative fiction author, I’ve never shied away from fabulism or magical realism when writing. But when my book was marketed as “witchy, weird-girl YA,” I thought, aren’t all teenage girls weird and witchy in their own way? Coming of age pushes characters into an awkward metamorphosis through which they become more firmly themselves. There are growing pains, and it’s awful a lot of the time. When Lucero, the main character of They Called Us Wicked, meets her coven on the astral plane, she discovers what it means to have friends to be weird with. Isn’t that all we can hope for both in fiction and in our daily lives? Here are some of my favorite recent books with witchy, weird-girl YA characters: They Bloom at Night by Trang Thanh TranThis coming-of-rage novel follows Noon, who is haunted by a terrible thing that happened to her. It’s a story of survival, grief, and stepping into one’s power. In the wake of a hurricane, red algae blooms appear in the waters of Mercy, Louisiana. Like the animals in the Gulf, Noon may be mutating and tra...