I have spent my entire life in the literary industry, first being raised by an author and her two published sisters, then signing my own book deal at age nineteen. So basically, I am completely incapable of seeing the world through anything but a bookish lens. For this little project, I was asked to make some recommendations based on a subject I care about. I chose Wasted Women. These are books about women who deserve more out of life than they have—and about the consequences of letting a clever woman stay caged.
By Paige Harbison
Brooke and Natalie have been friends so long that they’re more like sisters—that is to say, they don’t have very much in common these days. Brooke is the fun one. The crazy one. The life of the party. Natalie is an introvert with her eyes on the future. Which is why it’s so surprising when Natalie betrays Brooke, and the two throw gasoline on a fire that clearly started years ago.
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By Gillian Flynn
If you haven’t read Gone Girl by now, then stop everything and pick it up. What fascinates me about this book is the main character, Amy, and what drives her. She is a wasted woman—that is to say, she is a brilliant woman living a life too small, and this is a book about the consequences of that.
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By Kathleen E. Woodiwiss
A classic that probably hasn’t made its way onto many modern lists. But this book, in its nearly seven hundred pages, will absolutely carry any reader away. Shanna is a feisty, rambunctious, often bitchy, often wrong, character. She’s so clever that she gets in her own way. You never know what she’s going to do, but you know she’s too big for the life she is being threatened with and that she’ll do anything to make sure she doesn’t fall victim to a life that will bore her. She refuses to be a wasted woman. Also? This book is jampacked with very, very hot sexual tension.
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By Joshilyn Jackson
This book. I can hear the cicadas now. I love this book because our main character is guided by self-imposed rules for herself that she desperately wants to abide. At first glance, she seems like she might be just anyone—but she has a wild past you can hardly believe she moved beyond. The women in this book are more powerful than the world they are in.
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By Matt Haig
This is a book that’s landed on a million lists in the last few years. I ignored it for a long time, and when I ultimately read it, I fell completely under its spell. It’s rare that without venturing into the genre of fantasy, we get to be so swept away into the magic of a world like this. Despite being set, mostly, in our everyday world, it feels enchanting the whole way through. The main character doesn’t know how big she is. (Sub-plug, it’s very in the world of the excellent new film Everything Everywhere All at Once.)
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By Cat Marnell
This one is literally about a wasted woman. It’s a fascinating non-fictional journey to be taken on by the author, who has led a fascinating, glittering New York life working for Conde Naste and other high-profile jobs. A life that she is consistently self-sabotaging through the abuse of drugs—particularly the ones prescribed to her by her father when she was a child. She is smart, sharp, interesting, interested in the world around her, and yet she continues to burn everything down time and time again.
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