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How to Build a Girl

This series chronicles the tumultuous journey of adolescence as a young girl constructs her identity from scratch. Set in the 1990s, the protagonist, disillusioned with her current reality, reinvents herself entirely. She embarks on a quest for self-discovery fueled by books, music, and unconventional role models. The narrative fearlessly explores courage, sexual awakening, and finding one's place in the world with a potent blend of humor and raw honesty.

How to Build a Girl
How to Be Famous

Recommended Reading Order

  1. 1

    Soon to be a motion picture! The New York Times bestselling author, celebrated as “the UK’s answer to Tina Fey, Chelsea Handler, and Lena Dunham all rolled into one” (Marie Claire), makes her fiction debut with a hilarious yet deeply moving coming-of-age novel. At fourteen, Johanna Morrigan feels her parents’ teachings fall short, prompting her to seek inspiration from books, poetry, and pop songs to reinvent herself. It’s 1990, and after a humiliating experience on local TV, she transforms into Dolly Wilde—an audacious, hard-drinking Gothic hero and self-proclaimed Lady Sex Adventurer. Determined to save her struggling Bohemian family, she aspires to be a writer like Jo in Little Women, but without the tragic ending. By sixteen, she’s smoking, drinking, and working for a music paper, penning risqué letters to rock stars and critiquing bands with sharp wit. However, as Johanna navigates her wild new persona, she discovers a critical flaw in her creation of Dolly. Is a collection of records, posters, and books truly enough to define who she is? Imagine The Bell Jar penned by Rizzo from Grease. This story is a funny, poignant exploration of self-discovery and reinvention, told with Caitlin Moran's unique voice.

    How to Build a Girl
  2. 2

    How to Be Famous

    • 336 pages
    • 12 hours of reading
    4.1(420)Add rating

    I'm Johanna Morrigan, and I live in London in 1995, at the epicentre of Britpop. I might only be nineteen, but I'm wise enough to know that everyone around me is handling fame very, very badly. My unrequited love, John Kite, has scored an unexpected Number One album, then exploded into a Booze And Drugs Hell - as rockstars do. And my new best friend - the maverick feminist Suzanne Banks, of The Branks - has amazing hair, but writer's block and a rampant pill problem. So I've decided I should become a Fame Doctor. I'm going to use my new monthly column for The Face to write about every ridiculous, surreal, amazing aspect of a million people knowing your name. But when my two-night-stand with edgy comedian Jerry Sharp goes wrong, people start to know my name for all the wrong reasons. 'He's a vampire. He destroys bright young girls. Also, he's a total dick' Suzanne warned me. But by that point, I'd already had sex with him. Bad sex. Now I'm one of the girls he's trying to destroy. He needs to be stopped. But how can one woman stop a bad, famous, powerful man?

    How to Be Famous