The best women’s fiction with an unlikely heroine

I literally could not stop crying through this entire book. When this novel first begins, we find Kenna Rowan has just been released from jail. She is alone, penniless, and scared with all the cards stacked against her, and she is on a mission to find her daughter. Despite the mystery surrounding the incident that causes Kenna’s incarceration, you are instantly drawn into this character’s vulnerability and sheer force of will and determination. She is at once utterly alone on an island while also strong and brave like a warrior, ready to face the demons in her past in order to find a path back to the daughter that was taken from her. I love all of Colleen Hoover’s novels, but this one shredded me. I couldn’t put it down, had to find out what happened, had to know that Kenna was safe, understood, and vindicated.   

I came across this novel after I started following the author on Instagram. It was my first time dabbling in magical realism, and I found myself instantly hooked. Angie is an overweight, fifty-year-old housecleaner with a special skill—she can see the dead. Despite her best efforts to ignore her intuition, the spirits follow her, seek her out, and try to absorb and siphon her human powers. I love the arc of this novel, following the most unlikely of heroines into a death-defying struggle, where she learns that she is stronger than she ever thought possible and more importantly, she doesn’t need anyone else to save her. I rooted for her the entire way through, and now I’m excited to hear the author is making this into a trilogy.

Just like everyone else, my gateway into Daphne du Maurier was the novel Rebecca, but right after devouring that, I began consuming the rest of her work and decided I liked Frenchman’s Creek even better. In Frenchman’s Creek, we are presented with a heroine, Lady Dona, who, in a day and age when women were taught to sit still and be pretty, is strong, restless, and independent. She shakes off the bonds of society and begins an affair with a handsome pirate. Okay, so of course this story is not at all realistic—I’m fully cognizant of that—but it is pure fun, suspense, sexual intrigue, and daring lust. I loved it and felt every single word that this masterful storyteller imbued in the tale.  

All hail Paige Toon! She is the best of women’s fiction—not too raunchy or over the top or gut-wrenching. Simple, sweet stories with a bit of heat. I recommend her to everyone I know. This particular novel, The Minute I Saw You, touched my heart from the very first page. When we meet Hannah and Sonny, they are both at a crossroads in their lives, not sure which way to turn or how to move on from respective tragedies in their past. I love that Hannah’s history involves something so unexpected that isn’t revealed until halfway through the book and becomes ever more the reason to root for her. And I love that she and Sonny spend so much time working through their demons independently before coming together. It’s a feel-good novel that leaves you with a smile on your face and a song in your heart.  

The premise of this short novel sucked me in right away. Missy Wright is shy, unhappy, poor, and a spinster. She is stifled and demeaned by her overbearing sisters and the local small-town gossips where she lives. Despite the fact that Ms. McCullough paints the portrait of a fairly unsavory heroine in the form of Missy, I still found myself rooting for her, wishing with all my might that she would (under the most improbable circumstances) find love. When I write about a heroine in my own novels, I want my readers to see past appearances and the superficial trappings of our society’s ideals. That is what this novel does—it draws you in and makes you believe the impossible is possible if only we can see beyond what is right in front of our faces—that dreams really can come true, for all shapes, sizes, styles, and substance.