Hawkmistress! is a great novel for girls. It's pretty much a coming of age story about Romilly, a girl laran-gifted with the power to control horses, hawks or dogs.

However, Romilly lives in a time and place where girls are merely marriage pawns. She is unwilling to accept the marriage her father sets for her and runs away. She plans to join her brother, who also ran away to train his laran gifts in a Tower, but is sidetracked into helping King Carolin reclaim his throne from a usuper.

Along the way, Romilly spends some time pretending to be a runaway boy, that being safer than being a runaway girl. She also fights to keep control of her gifts, keeping them from destroying her. At times she has doubts about the ethics of using her gifts to control animals.

This is one of the more feminist of the Darkover novels. Romilly joins the Sisterhood of the Sword to gain her freedom - one of the few ways a woman can live in the society without a husband. She has little to no interest in marriage through much of the story, which is quite understandable considering her experience of being promised to an man she found repulsive. 

All in all, this is a good read, especially for teen girls, but even as an adult I enjoy rereading it.