I'm a big fan of The Sisters Grimm series and the central character sounds just like your DD - not great at suspending disbelief but then finds out that she is a descendent of The Brothers Grimm and she is plopped down in a modern American town that is populated by every conceivable fairy tale character through history. All of these characters have modern day versions of themselves (i.e Snow White is a school teacher, the three little pigs have taken on human form and are the town's police force, etc.) She and her sister face some major adventures and soon you find yourself suspending disbelief whether you want to or not and her cynicism completely matches that of the reader. If any of the characters catches her attention there are a million tangents to go on to follow up on their original story. (i.e. Puck is a central character. In one of the books Oberon and Titania were introduced as characters so that led us to A Midsummer Night's Dream.)
Other favorites for my DD8 who also has high level comprehension - The Harry Potter series, A Wrinkle in Time and The Westing Game. We also did several of the Anne of Green Gables books (Anne grows up, gets married and has babies but no sexual content) and a lot of classics. She loved Great Expectations and A Christmas Carol so we will probably do more Dickens. Some of the classics, i.e. Dr. Dolittle, have some racist material that caught us off guard so they are not necessarily as safe a bet as I had assumed.
