Teenage Girls Can Be Demons

I wish I could have read Teenage Girls Can Be Demons by Hailey Piper when I was a teenage girl. This collection is a teenage girl rage trifecta - all at once a lesson in, an homage to, and permission for expressing righteous rage. 

The stories are mostly unconnected though some common themes (other than rage) pop up in some of them, including trans and other queer characters (and the othering of them either literally or metaphorically), parental relationships, and distrust of authority figures.

In an overall strong collection, some of the highlights for me were:

• The collection opener, Why We Keep Exploding, which reads like a dark fairy tale, told from the point of view of a trans girl who learns that being quiet is the best way to avoid hearing the words - like "Smile" - from men that make us (women) explode - in this case, literally.

• Last Leaf of an Ursine Tree -leaning even hard into a fairy tale - this one has literal bears that come to protect people during their menstrual cycle. 

• Benny Rose the Cannibal King - the longest story of the collection, over a third of the length of the book,  about a small town with one Boogeyman and everyone has their own version of his story. He comes out only on Halloween, and a group of girls find themselves face to face with him in 1987 - a fun "kids on bikes" story that is scary and full of girl power moments. 

Thank you to NetGalley and Titan Books for the advance copy for my honest review. Pub. date: 9/16/25

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