The best books starring women and girls who rocked the boat

This book gave me insights I never knew I needed.

I wanted to keep on diving into Violetta Chen-Samuels’ world and hang out with her until she taught me everything she knew about life, love, family—and incarceration. I don’t have a lot of experience with justice-impacted people, and I haven’t even read a lot of fiction about this population, so it was important to me to read this work, but discovering Baker’s near-future/alternate reality world also kept me going.

I found myself marveling over her skill and her gutsiness. I lived in Queens, where this book is set, for six years, and the sense of odd familiarity her work evokes was eerie because it’s definitely not the Queens I know. Baker’s methodology of alternating chapters between Violetta and Vince, Violetta’s brother, kept me on my toes. The sense of discovery from one chapter to the next kept me turning pages, and I fell quickly in love with the characters in this book.

Terrible things happen to the women in this book, but they all, every single one of them, rock the boat to try and make their own lives. In this retelling of The Great Gatsby that centers the POVs of three women critical to the story (Jordan Baker, Daisy Buchanan, and Myrtle Wilson’s suffragist sister), we get the story that was always hiding between the lines.

I found myself proud of and mourning the lives of each of these women. I felt furious on their behalf and hopeful that the generations that came after them would reap the benefits of their mistakes and their work. 

Perhaps most surprising to me, I found myself wanting to know these women more than I ever, ever wanted to get to know Gatsby’s world. 

I didn’t even know that indentured servitude to the police could be a thing for young women. Sure, sure, we’re talking about another place, another era—1800s Korea—but the immediacy with which Hur tells this story puts it right there for me. 

She weaves exacting detail and information throughout this gripping mystery: If the premise didn’t already hook me, I’d be pulled in by the way this mystery rapidly turns personal for Seol, our heroine. 

Another unlikely heroine, but only because she sees ghosts—okay, okay, maybe also because seeing ghosts or even talking about them is strictly forbidden in Rita Todacheene’s Navajo culture.

I loved this book so, so much for both its detail and its unusual premise. Todacheene’s ghosts haunt her and play an active part in her investigations as a forensic photographer. And, since the author was a forensic photographer herself, the work rings true and sharp. Ghosts aside, she also has to contend with her own culture, a struggle with which I’m intimately familiar.  

I also loved the way that Emerson structured this book—Todacheene’s beloved cameras, acting as framing devices, guide us through her timeline, and she keeps on learning things about herself even as we go from the most advanced camera to the oldest possible film-based option. I can’t wait to read the second in this series to see what our heroine is up to. 

Fat camp. Zombies. Trust me, you want to hang out with the hero of this novel, Vivian Ellenshaw. Here’s what I love about her: 1. She’s not the sad sack heroine who wants to lose weight. 2. She’s an excellent friend. 3. She doesn’t back down. I could go on, but why bother? 

You'll want to read this book for its action, its pacing, its setting, and its adventure—but you'll also want to read it because you really, really want to get to know Vivian. Honestly, I’ll never forget her.