Reluctant reader - former bookworm, suggestions for older girls please!

[stirling]

Mumsnet recommendations really served my children well throughout primary and early secondary years. Then phones and lockdown wiped out their good reading habits.

DD is almost 16 and in y11. She's being urged to read (esp classics) by the teacher and tutor.
She hates, and has always hated classics. Is there a good modern day classic you'd suggest in terms of it being engaging? She loves a good non-put-downable.

Thanks

Mine is enjoying murder mysteries - modern ones like One of us is lying and also Agatha Christie
They hated the classics that were set for GCSE

‘Lady Into Fox’ by David Garnett. Early 20th century but wholly modern. And fewer than 100 pages. I’d be astonished if she didn’t find it compelling - it really is a reader’s book.

Brilliant thank you!

Managed to delete follow up post. Briefly, yes, all the Golden Age crime writers alongside Christie.

Dorothy L. Sayers

Josephine Tey

Etc, etc.

Also ‘Rogue Male’ by Geoffrey Household. Staggeringly tense and exciting - I wish it was recommended more. (With caveats as very much of it’s time.)

The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins is a classic that's a really good read with a spooky/weird story

Thinking reluctant to read teenager, rather than classics:

'The Help' - not sure if it's a classic but it's a modern book teenagers seem to like.
She's probably already read The Hunger Games but it worked for my son in terms of non putdownable.
At that age I liked the Saki short stories - now they are classics. Older language so require more effort but sharp and funny.

The Handmaid’s Tale?

(Of its time ..)

Not classics but books that got my teen dd reading again, were the Sarah J Maas books.

Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier and The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath are two great modern classics. Not modern classics, but decent/easy to get into are:
The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo

The Secret History?

Piranesi - Susannah Clarke
My 16 yr old DD has just read Wuthering Heights for the first time and is mesmerized
She's also quite enjoying some of the modern takes on Greek mythology. I read Circe and loved it

Secret History is a good suggestion - very popular with this age group, although it's very long

@Beamur Circle is a good shout too, very readable. Ariadne by Jennifer Saint is similar.

A few years ago there were some rewritings of Jane Austen's books under the title of The Austen Project. Joanne Trollope did Sense and Sensibility, Alexander McCall Smith Emma, Val Macdiarmid Northanger Abbey and Eligible, by Curtis Sittenfeld is the P&P one. Maybe worth a try as a 'gateway'?

If she's struggling to get back into reading full stop, get her to try on of Sarah Crossan's free verse novels like One, Toffee or The Weight Of Water (there are more). Very readable but also very quick to read.

So glad I posted. Thanks for all the suggestions.

Educated by Tara Westover
Amazing book...she will love it..l think

I liked Jane Eyre.
I also liked Twelfth night. And an inspector calls (if not class book).

I adored 'A Town Like Alice' at her age.

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
Sal by Mick Kitson (A girl runs away with her little sister to camp out in the Scottish hills because her step father is abusing her).
A Little Love Song by Michelle Magorian

Maybe she needs something easier to read to get her back into it at this stage my DD got into JoJo Moyes 'Me before You' series kick starter her reading habit. She's 19 now and really into Colleen Hoover's books.
It sounds just like she needs to rediscover the joy of a story.
I lost the ability to enjoy actual reading whilst reading a stupid number of papers and now I enjoy the story by audio books.

Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray

I would focus on just getting her to read anything to be honest! I think reading is one of those things that can be hard to start up again but once the momentum is going it’s easier to keep it going.

Some ideas of books that I found exciting / page turning / interesting as an older teen, or that my 15-16 year old nephew/niece are enjoying at the moment:

Becky Albertalli - The Simon series, Imogen Obviously, Kate in Waiting

Leigh Bardugo - Six of Crows duology, Shadow and Bone trilogy, King of Scars duology, Ninth House

Holly Black - The Folk of the Air series, Modern Faerie Tales series, The Darkest Part of the Forest

Alexandra Bracken - The Darkest Minds series, Lore, The Passenger series

Kiera Cass - The Selection series

Stephen Chbosky - Perks of being a Wallflower

Cassandra Clare - Mortal Instruments series

John Green - Looking for Alaska, An Abundance of Katherines, Paper Towns, The Fault in Our Stars, Turtles All The Way Down

Jenny Han - To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before trilogy, The Summer I Turned Pretty trilogy

S E Hinton - The Outsiders

Holly Jackson - Good Girls Guide to Murder series

Stephen King - Carrie, Christine, The Long Walk, The Talisman, Fairy Tale, Different Seasons, The Shining

E Lockhart - We Were Liars, The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, Again Again

Emma Lord - Tweet Cute, You Have A Match, When You Get The Chance, Begin Again

Katherine McGee - American Royals series

Karen McManus - One of us is Lying trilogy

Marissa Meyer - The Lunar Chronicles series, Heartless

Erin Morgenstern - The Night Circus, The Starless Sea

Patrick Ness - Chaos Walking series, A Monster Calls, More than This

Meg Rosoff - How I Live Now, Just in Case, What I Was

Rainbow Rowell - Eleanor and Park, Fangirl, Carry On, Wayward Son

Adam Silvera - More Happy Than Not, History is All You Left Me, They Both Die at the End, The First to Die at the End

Jordyn Taylor - Don’t Breathe a Word, The Paper Girls of Paris

Scott Westerfeld - The Uglies series

Not classics, but any reading is better than no reading so Janet Evanovich - One for the money (and the rest of the series) and the series that starts with The Heist.