The Wilder Girls, by Rory Power

[rachelmanija]

I reviewed The Wilder Girls by Rory Power, an Annihilation-esque YA horror/sf novel about a girls' boarding school infected by a bizarre disease that mutates them. It's got lots of vivid imagery (much of it so nauseating that I had to skim) and an excellently hothouse atmosphere of desperately intense emotion, until YA dystopian plot tropes dissolve it all into a barrage of nonsensical plot twists.

F/F content: central F/F romantic relationship, equally or more important female relationship that may be platonic or may be romantic but not sexual.

The Wilder Girls.

A pair of YA thrillers starring young WLW

[hebethen]

I had the good fortune to come across two of these in a row without even having had to look for them!

First: Naomi Kritzer's Catfishing on the CatNet, a near-future SF thriller about an internet-loving teen and her mother constantly on the run from a mysterious abusive father, contains a sweet and very organic f/f subplot. It's apparently set up to be the start of a series, and I'm really looking forward to the next book.

Second: Shamim Sarif's The Athena Protocol, a contemporary-ish spy thriller featuring a small all-female rogue spy agency, also contains an f/f subplot, though perhaps a tick more sub than CotCN depending on how you look at it. This romance is a lot more fraught, in the ways you'd expect from a spy thriller, if that's more your speed.

(My thoughts on these books as a whole)

(Bonus: Naomi Kritzer also wrote an f/f fantasy duology, Fires of the Faithful and Turning the Storm, which I particularly enjoyed for its portrayal of agnosticism in a world where believers command actual magical powers, among other things.)