Stories of teen girls’ revenge and rebellion for your inner Lucille Bluth
As summer approaches and the weather warms up, your teen readers might be feeling a little more feisty and in the mood for some rebellion (as they get ready to escape their schools’ authority, some for the summer and some for life).
If they’re more of the “vicarious revenge and rebellion” types, these three recent tales will scratch your readers’ itch for girls fighting back and/or getting revenge in varied and creative ways!
Here Lies a Vengeful Bitch
Who: High school ne’er-do-well Annie Lane
What does she need revenge for: Her own murder
Annie Lane has been beaten, stabbed, and left dead in a river.
That’s how Codie Crowley’s 2024 YA debut, Here Lies a Vengeful Bitch, opens. Part I Spit on Your Grave, part Susie Q (the 1996 made-for-TV movie about a high school girl tragically killed who can interact with the living world to fix unfinished business), Annie returns to her home, her high school, and the scene(s) of the crimes against her, much to the confusion and consternation of those who knew her alive.
Annie knows that someone close to her killed her and, with a ragtag gang of dead (maybe? It’s complicated.) accomplices and a kickass Black Sabbath soundtrack, Annie sets out to literally paint the town red and accomplish two important goals:
- Figure out who, exactly, she remembers interacting with in her final hours ultimately did the deed and left her for dead, and
- Make sure that person suffers until their last breath
All while making sure the community that had rejected her for as long as she could remember is as traumatized by her murder as she was. And, of course, maybe figure out what’s going on with that cute ghost guy in the mansion on the hill with the sweet vintage motorcycle.
Who: Lucille and Winona
What do they need revenge for: Lucille, for being trapped in a cycle of family poverty made worse by her brother’s drug-dealing and stealing Lucille’s secret cash stash, and Winona, whose life of wealth and privilege provided by her philanthropist weatherman father hides a horrific cycle of abuse and control
Lucille and Winona are trapped – Lucille by her family’s poverty and Winona by her family’s wealth and public image.
Lucille’s brother does nothing but keep the couch from floating away while dealing drugs on the side (some recreational, some for more nefarious purposes), while Winona’s dad – living off her presumed-dead mother’s family wealth to prop up his public image as a philanthropist and the area’s most charming television weatherman – controls every moment of Winona’s life, from her caloric intake to even her slightest expression of emotion, with horrific abuse to follow for even the slightest step out of line (trigger warnings necessary for readers with a history of trauma and/or abuse).
They rebel in whatever small ways they can, by sneaking out to a local dive bar and Lucille hiding small amounts of cash, but can never escape the horrors of their home lives for very long. When both girls are pushed too far by their family circumstances and lack of a foreseeable escape, they take matters into their own hands: stealing Winona’s grandfather’s classic sports car for a cross-country road trip involving a handsome drifter, an Amber Alert, hustling locals in pool halls and casinos, and disguises with varying levels of competence and intricacy.
That’s to say nothing of the bigger crimes the girls have to engage in to keep themselves on the road, hurtling toward where Winona is certain her mother is still alive.
It’s Thelma and Louise meets Boys on the Side as Lucille and Winona reject the families that have held them back for so long to be family for each other.
Who: Sarah Forbes Bonetta (Ina)
What does she need revenge for: Broadly, colonialism; specifically, being kidnapped from her West African royal family to serve publicly as a representation of Queen Victoria’s goodwill toward Britain’s conquered lands
Sarah Raughley’s 2025 tale of historical revenge opens with Ina, known in Britain (and historically – this is a fictionalization of a real figure from British colonial history) as Sarah Forbes Bonetta, ensuring that one of the people central to her kidnapping and transportation from West Africa to the United Kingdom ends his life as humiliatingly as possible.
Mr. Bellamy was just one name on Ina’s Arya Stark-esque list of people who had wronged her and forced her to become the smiling public face of Queen Victoria’s charity toward her colonial subjects.
Don’t worry – Victoria has her own spot on the list.
Aided by a dreamy Chinese gangster with myriad connections to the London underworld (to say nothing of his own motivations for revenge against the Crown), Ina has to dodge an arranged marriage, the romantic advances of one of the Queen’s sons, social and political intrigue, and the repeated meddling of a man connected to her traumatic and horrific experiences in a Sierra Leone boarding school, all while attempting to make Britain’s wealthy elites pay for stealing Ina from her homeland.
It’s Kill Bill mixed with Things Fall Apart, with a healthy dose of history for readers curious about how the colonized felt about being “welcomed” into the British Empire.
-Justin Hofstetter
