--- title: This is Why So Many Books Have 'Girl' In the Title description: Author Emily St. John Mandel did research as to why so many best-selling books have the word"girl" in the title. canonical: https://time.com/4551310/girl-book-titles/ author: TIME Staff article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-10-31T17:26:14.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T09:03:43.480Z og:title: Why So Many Books Have 'Girl' in the Title og:description: Author Emily St. John Mandel digs up the truth behind the trend og:url: https://time.com/4551310/girl-book-titles/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt2abf7ed4dafb98ec/6988ac46cd1bba13b4702e91/girl-book-titles.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 3000 og:image:height: 1688 og:image:alt: girl-book-titles og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Why So Many Books Have 'Girl' in the Title twitter:description: Author Emily St. John Mandel digs up the truth behind the trend twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt2abf7ed4dafb98ec/6988ac46cd1bba13b4702e91/girl-book-titles.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Why So Many Books Have 'Girl' in the Title > Sponsored content. 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Worth Your Time is TIME's culture newsletter, published Tuesdays and Saturdays to 40,000 subscribers as of August 2026. #### Who writes TIME's culture recommendations? Culture editor Eliza Berman writes Worth Your Time, drawing on TIME's critics and culture desk. #### Is Worth Your Time free? Yes. It is a free newsletter available at time.com/newsletters. by [TIME Staff](https://time.com/author/time-staff/) ## TIME Staff Oct 31, 2016 5:26 PM UTC  Random House; Crown Publishing Group; Vintage Crime/Black Lizard by [TIME Staff](https://time.com/author/time-staff/) ## TIME Staff Oct 31, 2016 5:26 PM UTC Take a look at some of the most influential, best-selling [books](http://time.com/4535196/halloween-books-2016/) of the past few years, and you’ll notice a similarity between them all: the word “girl” in the title. [_The_ ](https://www.amazon.com/Girl-Train-Novel-Paula-Hawkins-ebook/dp/B00L9B7IKE/)[_Girl on the Train_](https://www.amazon.com/Girl-Train-Novel-Paula-Hawkins-ebook/dp/B00L9B7IKE/?tag=mottocom-20)_._ [_Gone Girl_](https://www.amazon.com/Gone-Girl-Novel-Gillian-Flynn-ebook/dp/B006LSZECO/?tag=mottocom-20)_._ [_The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo_](https://www.amazon.com/Girl-Dragon-Tattoo-Millennium-Book-ebook/dp/B0015DROBO/?tag=mottocom-20)_._ [_The Girls_](https://www.amazon.com/Girls-Novel-Emma-Cline-ebook/dp/B015LYZH20/?tag=mottocom-20)_._ Emily St. John Mandel, best-selling author of the National Book Award finalist [_Station Eleven_](https://www.amazon.com/Station-Eleven-Emily-John-Mandel-ebook/dp/B00J1IQUYM/?tag=mottocom-20), decided to delve into this recent trend in literary works in an [article](http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-gone-girl-with-the-dragon-tattoo-on-the-train/) for _FiveThirtyEight_. St. John Mandel used the popular website [Goodreads](https://www.goodreads.com/) to help track titles with “girl” in it, and gather data from those results. She and research assistants looked at the 2,000 most popular books with “girl” in the title. After eliminating children’s and young adult books and novels with less than 250 ratings on Goodreads, St. John Mandel was left with 810 options. [_Follow Motto on Facebook_](https://www.facebook.com/mottoworkplaylive/)_._ [According](http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-gone-girl-with-the-dragon-tattoo-on-the-train/) to her data, 79% of the authors of “girl” books were women and 85% of the time, the “girl” made it through the novel alive. But, St. John Mandel added, “If a book with ‘girl’ in the title was written by a man, the girl is more likely to end up dead.” Using her data, St. John Mandel discovered that girls end up dead 17% of the time in books written by men, whereas only 5% for female authors. St. John Mandel also makes it a point to distinguish between “girl” and “woman.” In many cases, the “girl” in the title is actually not an adolescent or child. St. John Mandel discovered that 65% of the time, the “girl” was in fact a woman, and only 28% of time the character was a “girl” (7% was indeterminate). St. John Mandel was fascinated by this discrepancy, and [according](http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-gone-girl-with-the-dragon-tattoo-on-the-train/) to her editor Jennifer Jackson at Knopf, the distinction of “girl” rather than “woman” potentially “hints at a vulnerability that raises the stakes.” The end of the “girls” trend is nowhere in sight for book titles, according to St. John Mandel. Her Goodreads analysis shows, “This year is shaping up to be the biggest year for ‘girls’ in fiction in decades, with nearly 1 percent of fiction titles featuring the word ‘girl’ in the title.” So don’t be surprised next time you head to the bookstore and see the word “girl” everywhere. \[[FiveThirtyEight](http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-gone-girl-with-the-dragon-tattoo-on-the-train/)\] ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4551310/girl-book-titles/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4551310/girl-book-titles/"},"headline":"Why So Many Books Have 'Girl' in the Title","datePublished":"2016-10-31T17:26:14.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T09:03:43.480Z","description":"Author Emily St. John Mandel digs up the truth behind the trend","url":"https://time.com/4551310/girl-book-titles/","keywords":["motto"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt2abf7ed4dafb98ec/6988ac46cd1bba13b4702e91/girl-book-titles.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"TIME Staff","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/time-staff/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt2abf7ed4dafb98ec/6988ac46cd1bba13b4702e91/girl-book-titles.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"girl-book-titles","caption":"","creditText":"Random House; Crown Publishing Group; Vintage Crime/Black Lizard","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/tag/motto/","name":"motto"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4551310/girl-book-titles/","name":"Why So Many Books Have 'Girl' in the Title"}}]}] ```