Try Nokosee: Rise of the New Seminole and its sequel Nokosee & Stormy: Love and Bullets. Both are written from a 17-year-old girl's POV. A star-crossed coming-of-age tale with lots of action, adventure and romance layered over a twisted contemporary save-the-environment plea. It's Romeo and Juliet (and West Side Story-- the guy can dance) set in the Everglades. Stormy Jones, the girl in the stories, is a tsundere character (as is Nokosee) that will stick with you for a long time.
Cherry by Mary Karr. A memoir about teens, sex, drugs and growing up in rural Texas as told through the gritty, beautiful prose of one of America's best writers having taught at Harvard and currently teaching as the Peck Professor of English Literature at Syracuse University. It's a book every teen girl should read. If the opening paragraph doesn't do it for you, nothing will. On June 5, 2012, she released her first music CD as a co-writer with Rodney Crowel called "Kin." Told in first-person (a memoir).
The Liar's Club by Mary Karr. Another moving memoir recounting her earlier years (you should probably read this one first and then Cherry). Told in first-person (a memoir).
Jennifer Miller’s debut novel The Year of the Gadfly is a tale of prep school scandal and secret societies starring a very precocious 15-year-old young lady named Iris Dupont, whose best and only friend is the chain-smoking ghost of famed broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow. If it sounds weirdly wonderful, it is – Iris would kill us for using a cliché here, but we can’t help but call the novel compulsively readable, and it feels a little something like a cross between The Secret History and Gossip Girl, although with significantly more masturbation scenes than the former and more dusty tomes than the latter. As reviewed by Emily Temple, Flavorwire
The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides. A moving story inspired by true events about the suicides of five teenage sisters as told from the viewpoint (for the most part) of randy teenage boys who try to explain it all.
Carol Rifka Brunt's debut novel Tell the Wolves I'm Home. “A fresh yet nostalgic debut novel about a 1980s teen who loses a beloved uncle to AIDS but finds herself by befriending his grieving boyfriend. Filled with lost opportunities and second chances, the book delivers wisdom, innocence and originality with surprising sweetness. Its cast of waifs and strays will steal your heart as they show each other the way to redemption.” –Shelf Awareness. Listed as one of the ten-best debut novels of 2012 by Flavorwire. Told in first-person.
Mary Stewart Atwell's debut novel Wild Girls. "This daringly imagined, atmospheric, and original book is part coming-of-age story and part supernatural tale about teenage girls learning their own strength. Kate Riordan fears two things as she grows up in the small Appalachian town of Swan River: that she’ll be a frustrated townie forever, or that she’ll turn into one of the monstrous wild girls, fire starters who menace the community. Struggling to better her chances of escaping, Kate attends the posh Swan River Academy and finds herself divided between her hometown—and its dark history—and the realm of privilege and achievement at the Academy. Explosive friendships with Mason, a boy from the wrong side of town, and Willow, a wealthy and popular queen bee from school are slowly pulling her apart. Kate must decide who she is and where she belongs before she wakes up with cinders at her fingertips." Review by Flavorwire. Told in first-person.
The Adults by Alison Espach is the "defining novel for recovering debutantes from Connecticut. The novel is narrated by Emily, a high school freshman, who grows up in the privileged world of investment bank commuters and desperate housewives. Her padded life suddenly unravels when she wakes early one morning after a sleepover, and looks out her kitchen window to witness her neighbor’s suicide. Grace is found in the secret, illicit relationship that develops between Emily and her English teacher. Amidst a world of cheese platters and art auctions, their relationship simply surfaces as something real while everything else in Emily’s world just seems sterilized... (This is) white girl fiction.” by Geoff Max for Flavorwire. Told in first-person.
Hick by Andrea Portes. Teenage Luli is fed up with her drunken parents brawls and decides to leave Nebraska for Las Vegas. Along the way, a wily con artist and a sullen cowboy each try to lay claim to the conflicted girl's future. Also a 2011 movie starring Chloe Moretz and Blake Lively. Told in first-person.
The Death of Bees: A Novel by Lisa O'Donnell. Set in Glasgow, Scotland, this just released beautiful and darkly comic coming-of-age mystery surrounds 15-year-old Marnie and her little sister who know more than they want to reveal about the deaths of their parents who they buried in the backyard. Told in first-person.
Crazy Dangerous by Andrew Klavan. This fast-paced thriller concerns two disparate friends. Sam Hopkins is a pastor's kid with a rebellious streak. Jennifer, his classmate, suffers from visions of demons and voices in her head. When Jennifer warns Sam about an impending massacre, he must choose whether to believe his disturbed friend or not—at the risk (if she is correct and he does nothing) of allowing hundreds to die. Early on in the book, Sam is moved by a Latin phrase he finds on a small statue of an angel: recte age nil time. That is, do right; fear nothing. This is the dubious, flickering star that guides Sam's path—and provides the central tension of Klavan's novel. There doesn't seem to be anything Sam won't do in attempting to do right—whether that is starting fights, trespassing, stealing cars, or evading the police. Review from Image. Told in first-person.
Maya's Notebook by Isabel Allende is a wild ride of a coming-of-age story set in LA, Las Vegas, and a small island off of Chile. An extreme case of teen angst and grief following the death of her grandfather hurls 19-year-old Maya into a life of drugs, alcohol, and crime. With the FBI and Interpol hot on her trail, her grandmother helps Maya escape to a remote island off of Chile with a blank notebook to record the "monumental stupidities" in her life with the hope she'll learn something. Told in first-person.
Dare Me by award-winning author Megan Abbott is the first person account of a high school senior cheerleader trying to come to grips with a suicide, lies, bitchiness, obsession, and friendship in a hard to put down psychological thriller that keeps you guessing until the end.
Salvage the Bones, Jesmyn Ward's 2011 National Book Award winner with a 14-year-old pregnant narrator that trumps the current YA love affair with dystopian fantasy with vivid prose and realistic survival situations during a 12-day span during hurricane Katrina.