Check out these great books with flawed female characters – ranging from the prickly and bitter to the criminal and outright unhinged.
Death Of A Bookseller by Alice Slater
Blurb: “Roach would rather be listening to the latest episode of her favorite true crime podcast than assisting the boring and predictable customers at her local branch of the bookstore Spines, where she’s worked her entire adult life. A serious true crime junkie, Roach looks down her nose at the pumpkin-spice-latte-drinking casual fans who only became interested in the genre once it got trendy. But when Laura, a pretty and charismatic children’s bookseller, arrives to help rejuvenate the struggling bookstore branch, Roach recognizes in her an unexpected kindred spirit. A darkly funny suspense novel, Death of a Bookseller raises ethical questions about the fervor for true crime and how we handle stories that don’t belong to us.” Read my full review of Death Of A Bookseller here.
My Sister, The Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite
Blurb: “In My Sister, The Serial Killer, Korede’s sister Ayoola is many things: the favorite child, the beautiful one, possibly sociopathic. And now Ayoola’s third boyfriend in a row is dead, stabbed through the heart with Ayoola’s knife. Korede has long been in love with a kind, handsome doctor at the hospital where she works. She dreams of the day when he will realize that she’s exactly what he needs. But when he asks Korede for Ayoola’s phone number, she must reckon with what her sister has become and how far she’s willing to go to protect her.” Read my full review of My Sister, The Serial Killer here.
My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
Blurb: “Beginning in the 1950s in a poor but vibrant neighborhood on the outskirts of Naples, Elena Ferrante’s four-volume story spans almost sixty years, as its main characters, the fiery and unforgettable Lila and the bookish narrator, Elena, become women, wives, mothers, and leaders, all the while maintaining a complex and at times conflicted friendship. My Brilliant Friend, the first novel in the series, follows Lila and Elena from their fateful meeting as ten-year-olds through their school years and adolescence. Through the lives of these two women, Ferrante tells the story of a neighborhood, a city, and a country as it is transformed in ways that, in turn, also transform the relationship between two women.” Read my full review of My Brilliant Friend here.
Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
Blurb: “Meet Eleanor Oliphant: She struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she’s thinking. Nothing is missing in her carefully timetabled life of avoiding social interactions, where weekends are punctuated by frozen pizza, vodka, and phone chats with Mummy. But everything changes when Eleanor meets Raymond, the bumbling and deeply unhygienic IT guy from her office. When she and Raymond together save Sammy, an elderly gentleman who has fallen on the sidewalk, the three become the kinds of friends who rescue one another from the lives of isolation they have each been living. Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine is the smart, warm, and uplifting story of an out-of-the-ordinary heroine whose deadpan weirdness and unconscious wit make for an irresistible journey.” Read my full review of Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine here.
Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh
Blurb: “The Christmas season offers little cheer for Eileen, an unassuming yet disturbed young woman trapped between her role as her alcoholic father’s caretaker in a home whose squalor is the talk of the neighborhood and a day job as a secretary at the boys’ prison, filled with its own quotidian horrors. Consumed by resentment and self-loathing, Eileen tempers her dreary days with perverse fantasies and dreams of escaping to the big city. In the meantime, she fills her nights and weekends with shoplifting, stalking a buff prison guard named Randy, and cleaning up her increasingly deranged father’s messes. When the bright, beautiful, and cheery Rebecca Saint John arrives on the scene as the new counselor at Moorehead, Eileen is enchanted and proves unable to resist what appears at first to be a miraculously budding friendship.” Read my full review of Eileen here.
Dark Places by Gillian Flynn
Blurb: “Libby Day was seven when her mother and two sisters were murdered in ‘The Satan Sacrifice of Kinnakee, Kansas’. She survived—and famously testified that her fifteen-year-old brother, Ben, was the killer. Twenty-five years later, the Kill Club—a secret society obsessed with notorious crimes—locates Libby and pumps her for details. Libby hopes to turn a profit off her tragic history: she’ll reconnect with the players from that night and report her findings to the club—for a fee. In Dark Places, as Libby’s search takes her from shabby Missouri strip clubs to abandoned Oklahoma tourist towns, the unimaginable truth emerges, and Libby finds herself right back where she started—on the run from a killer.” Read my full review of Dark Places here.
We Have Always Lived In The Castle by Shirley Jackson
Blurb: “Merricat Blackwood lives on the family estate with her sister Constance and her uncle Julian. Not long ago there were seven Blackwoods—until a fatal dose of arsenic found its way into the sugar bowl one terrible night. Acquitted of the murders, Constance has returned home, where Merricat protects her from the curiousity and hostility of the villagers. Their days pass in happy isolation until cousin Charles appears. Only Merricat can see the danger, and she must act swiftly to keep Constance from his grasp. Taking readers deep into a labyrinth of dark neurosis, We Have Always Lived in the Castle is a deliciously unsettling novel about a perverse, isolated, and possibly murderous family.” Read my full review of We Have Always Lived In The Castle here.
Luster by Raven Leilani
Blurb: “Edie is stumbling her way through her twenties―sharing a subpar apartment in Bushwick, clocking in and out of her admin job, making a series of inappropriate sexual choices. She is also haltingly, fitfully giving heat and air to the art that simmers inside her. And then she meets Eric, a digital archivist with a family in New Jersey, including an autopsist wife who has agreed to an open marriage―with rules. Luster is a portrait of a young woman trying to make sense of her life―her hunger, her anger―in a tumultuous era.” Read my full review of Luster here.
Adèle by Leïla Slimani
Blurb: “Adèle appears to have the perfect life: She is a successful journalist in Paris who lives in a beautiful apartment with her surgeon husband and their young son. But underneath the surface, she is bored–and consumed by an insatiable need for sex. Driven less by pleasure than compulsion, Adèle organizes her day around her extramarital affairs, arriving late to work and lying to her husband about where she’s been, until she becomes ensnared in a trap of her own making. Suspenseful, erotic, and electrically charged, Adèle is a captivating exploration of addiction, sexuality, and one woman’s quest to feel alive.” Read my full review of Adèle here.
Tampa by Alissa Nutting
Blurb: “Celeste has chosen and lured the charmingly modest Jack Patrick into her web. Jack is enthralled and in awe of his eighth-grade teacher, and, most importantly, willing to accept Celeste’s terms for a secret, forbidden romance―car rides after dark, rendezvous at Jack’s house while his single father works the late shift, and body-slamming erotic encounters in Celeste’s empty classroom. In slaking her sexual thirst, Celeste Price is remorseless and deviously free of hesitation, a monstress of pure motivation. Tampa is a sexually explicit, virtuosically satirical rendering of a monstrously misplaced but undeterrable desire.” Read my full review of Tampa here.
Notes On A Scandal by Zoe Heller
Blurb: “Schoolteacher Barbara Covett has led a solitary existence; aside from her cat, Portia, she has few friends and no intimates. When Sheba Hart joins St. George’s as the new art teacher, Barbara senses the possibility of a new friendship. It begins with lunches and continues with regular invitations to meals with Sheba’s seemingly close-knit family. But as Barbara and Sheba’s relationship develops, another does as well: Sheba has begun a passionate affair with an underage male student. Notes On A Scandal is a story of repression and passion, envy and complacence, friendship and loneliness.” Read my full review of Notes On A Scandal here.
Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
Blurb: “Little Fires Everywhere explores the weight of secrets, the nature of art and identity, and the ferocious pull of motherhood—and the danger of believing that following the rules can avert disaster. When old family friends of the Richardsons attempt to adopt a Chinese-American baby, a custody battle erupts that dramatically divides the town—and puts Mia and Elena on opposing sides. Suspicious of Mia and her motives, Elena is determined to uncover the secrets in Mia’s past. But her obsession will come at unexpected and devastating costs.” Read my full review of Little Fires Everywhere here.
Cat’s Eye by Margaret Atwood
Blurb: “Disturbing, humorous, and compassionate, Cat’s Eye is the story of Elaine Risley, a controversial painter who returns to Toronto, the city of her youth, for a retrospective of her art. Engulfed by vivid images of the past, she reminisces about a trio of girls who initiated her into the the fierce politics of childhood and its secret world of friendship, longing, and betrayal. Elaine must come to terms with her own identity as a daughter, a lover, an artist, and a woman—but above all she must seek release form her haunting memories.” Read my full review of Cat’s Eye here.
The Helpline by Katherine Collette
Blurb: “The Helpline is about people power and brain power—and the difficulty of getting them to work together. Germaine Johnson may not be all that good with people but she’s great with numbers. Unfortunately, as she discovers after the incident at Wallace Insurance, there are very few openings these days for senior mathematicians. Then her cousin gets her a job at the council. On the Senior Citizens Helpline. It’s not the resume entry Germaine wanted—but it turns out Mayor Verity Bainbridge has something more interesting in mind for her. A secret project involving the troublemakers at the senior citizens centre and their feud with the golf club next door.” Read my full review of The Helpline here.
How To Kill Your Family by Bella Mackie
Blurb: “When Grace Bernard discovers her absentee millionaire father has rejected her dying mother’s pleas for help, she vows revenge and coldly sets out to get her retribution—by killing them all, one by one. But then, Grace is imprisoned for a murder she didn’t commit. Outrageously funny, compulsively readable, and subversive, How to Kill Your Family is a wickedly dark romp about class, family, love… and murder.” Read my full review of How To Kill Your Family here.
Pizza Girl by Jean Kyoung Frazier
Blurb: “Eighteen years old, pregnant, and working as a pizza delivery girl in suburban Los Angeles, our charmingly dysfunctional heroine is deeply lost and in complete denial. She’s grieving the death of her father, avoiding her supportive mom and loving boyfriend, and flagrantly ignoring her future. Her world is further upended when she becomes obsessed with Jenny, a stay-at-home mother new to the neighborhood, who comes to depend on weekly deliveries of pickled-covered pizzas for her son’s happiness. In Pizza Girl, as one woman looks toward motherhood and the other toward middle age, the relationship between the two begins to blur in strange, complicated, and ultimately heartbreaking ways.” Read my full review of Pizza Girl here.
Too Much Lip by Melissa Lucashenko
Blurb: “Wise-cracking Kerry Salter has spent her adulthood avoiding two things: her hometown and prison. A tough, generous, reckless woman accused of having too much lip, Kerry uses anger to fight the avalanche of bullshit the world spews. But now her Pop is dying and she’s an inch away from the lockup, so she heads south on a stolen Harley for one last visit. In Too Much Lip, surrounded by the ghosts of their Elders and the memories of their ancestors, the Salters are driven by the deep need to make peace with their past while scrabbling to make sense of their present.” Read my full review of Too Much Lip here.
We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver
Blurb: “Eva never really wanted to be a mother—and certainly not the mother of the unlovable boy who murdered seven of his fellow high school students, a cafeteria worker, and a much-adored teacher who tried to befriend him, all two days before his sixteenth birthday. Now, two years later, it is time for her to come to terms with marriage, career, family, parenthood, and Kevin’s horrific rampage in a series of startlingly direct correspondences with her estranged husband, Franklin. We Need to Talk About Kevin is a piercing, unforgettable, and penetrating exploration of violence, family ties, and responsibility.” Read my full review of We Need To Talk About Kevin here.
Becky by Sarah May
Blurb: “It’s peak 90s London. Scandal dominates the headlines, men dominate the board rooms, and Becky will stop at nothing to reach the top at the Mercury newspaper. Mingling with tabloid millionaires and trading favours with royalty, Becky lands scoop after scoop, ruthlessly carving a place for herself in a world determined to ignore her. These are the biggest stories of the decade, and Becky has something to do with every one of them. But Becky may have more in common with the people she writes about than she thinks – what takes a lifetime to build takes only a moment to destroy.” Read my full review of Becky here.
Big Swiss by Jen Beagin
Blurb: “Greta spends her days transcribing therapy sessions for a sex coach who calls himself Om. She becomes infatuated with his newest client, a repressed married woman she affectionately refers to as Big Swiss. One day, Greta recognizes Big Swiss’s voice in town and they quickly become enmeshed. While Big Swiss is unaware Greta has eavesdropped on her most intimate exchanges, Greta has never been more herself with anyone. Her attraction to Big Swiss overrides her guilt, and she’ll do anything to sustain the relationship.” Read my full review of Big Swiss here.
The Fancies by Kim Lock
Blurb: “The Fancies is story about stories: those we tell, those we believe and those we make into a reality, whether true, murky or not true at all. Everyone knows that when Abigail Fancy left town at seventeen, she hung out the window of her boyfriend’s Corolla, middle fingers held high, swearing she’d never come back. And she hasn’t, until now. At her parents’ house Abigail finds a party (read town meeting) in full swing over something iffy found on the beach – a thighbone. And although iffy things aren’t uncommon in Port Kingerton, Abigail’s surprise arrival forces a family – and an entire town – to unpack a twenty-four-year-old secret that rocked this tiny place to its core.” Read my full review of The Fancies here.
Kill Your Boomers by Fiona Wright
Blurb: “In Kill Your Boomers, the great Australian dream is slipping out of reach for Keira and her friends. No partner, no house, no kids. When her best friend Dylan is able to buy an apartment with the help of his partner’s inheritance, Keira sees a way out. The bank of Mum and Dad. But what to do with parents who are in the rudest of health, and whose plans threaten to spend the only lifeline she has? From the lounge room of her rotting share house she hatches a deadly plan to speed up the process of wealth transfer.” Read my full review of Kill Your Boomers here.
Motherfaker by Anna Brook-Mitchell
Blurb: “Rebel-in-a-smock-dress Barri Brown has spent years slaving away as an English teacher in Guernsey, covering for colleagues with kids and barely tolerating the unhygienic staffroom etiquette. With a distant family and a husband who has just vanished along with her savings, Barri dreams of escape. Her wild plan? Become a Motherfaker: pretend she’s having a baby and use the paid year off work to start over somewhere new. All she has to do is blag it until she can disappear for good, without getting caught and being sent to prison for fraud. How hard could it be?” Read my full review of Motherfaker here.
Rabbits For Food by Binnie Kirshenbaum
Blurb: “While dining out with her husband and their friends, an acerbic, mordantly witty, and clinically depressed writer fully unravels. Her breakdown lands her in the psych ward of a prestigious New York hospital, where she refuses all modes of recommended treatment. Instead, she passes the time chronicling the lives of her fellow “lunatics” and writing a novel about what brought her there. Rabbits For Food shows how art can lead us out of—or into—the depths of disconsolate loneliness and piercing grief.” Read my full review of Rabbits For Food here.
Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke
Blurb: “Natalie lives a traditional lifestyle. Her charming farmhouse is rustic, her husband a handsome cowboy, her six children each more delightful than the last. So what if there are nannies and producers behind the scenes, her kitchen hiding industrial-grade fridges and ovens, her husband the Republican equivalent of a Kennedy? What Natalie’s followers—all 8 million of them—don’t know won’t hurt them. Until one morning she wakes up in a life that isn’t hers. Yesteryear is a gimlet-eyed look at tradition, fame, faith, and the grand performance of womanhood.” Read my full review of Yesteryear here.
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