Heroines in young adult fantasy and horror are often fighters, out to save the world, defeat the bad guy, and vindicate themselves in some way. But there’s a new trend that’s emerging, one that takes the idea of what it means to be a heroine and tilts it: reclamation. In these stories, girls have experienced some kind of transgression of the self, be it an idea imposed by a force outside themselves or a physical violation of some kind, so that the deeper themes have to do with taking back what was stolen on every level.

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