top of page

Search Results

900 results found for "strong women"

  • Six Great Historical Fiction Stories Set in the American West

    Kate is a tough young woman posing as a male cowboy. Turner's story is inspired by her family's memoirs, and her Sarah Prine is a strong woman living on the Walk on Earth a Stranger tells the story of Lee, a young woman with a powerful secret: an ability to Yet I'm also fascinated by the optimistic explorer spirit--and I do love reading about strong female characters in a time when the world around them didn't always support women's strength and determination

  • Review of The Return of Ellie Black by Emiko Jean

    While Chelsey struggles to be patient with the young woman who is coping with layers of trauma, she realizes When she comes home alive, only Chelsey finds it strange that Ellie has left her captor and remains alive I also found it strange that Chelsey operated as a solo actor in the investigation to the extent she

  • Three Books I'm Reading Now, 10/31/22 Edition

    and I'm reading Kate Manning's Gilded Mountain (to be published tomorrow), historical fiction about a strong young woman and her mining community in 1900s Colorado.

  • Shhh! Coffee Table Bossy Book Gift Ideas

    This selection might be the perfect coffee-table perusal for the vinyl lover in your life. 06 The Only Woman by Immy Humes The Only Woman is made up of 100 group photographs, each showing a lone woman in a male-dominated present and from countries around the world, Hume highlights photos emphasizing the concept of "the only woman Visually striking, The Only Woman features unknown and famous women who are astronauts, conductors, writers

  • Review of The Invisible Hour by Alice Hoffman

    I was taken with the first half of this book--a rural cult, a teen mother, a strong female protagonist Self-pity from a man was something she could not abide, not when she had a woman's issues to deal with The Invisible Hour begins with the story of Ivy, a feisty young woman who becomes pregnant, is threatened

  • Six Favorite Bossy Fantasy Reads from the Past Year

    02 The Last Legacy by Adrienne Young In Young's story, loosely set in the world of her Fable series, strong I was thrilled to find that Young's wonderful, signature strong-young-female protagonist-in-a-man's-world A strange fellow offers to lead Ollie to Gwen. In Hartman's Tess of the Road, Tess doesn't fit the mold of an obedient, quiet young woman in her medieval

  • Review of Carrie Soto Is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid

    gloriously unapologetic competitor, an emotionally closed off romantic partner, a dedicated daughter, and a woman And her dedicated manager Gwen is an inspiring, strong, independent woman who believes in any goal Carrie

  • Six Fascinating Historical Fiction Stories about the Civil War

    Cribb, Widow of the South by Robert Hicks, Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy b y Karen Abbott, and Enemy Women It is a strange thing, after all, to be able to return to a moment, when it can hardly be said to have detail the hardscrabble life of a newly freed Black person—and the often desperate circumstances of women (especially Black women) without men to protect them at the time.

  • Review of Happy Place by Emily Henry

    There's an enormous career shift that felt an awful lot like a woman giving up a career for a guy, although As a former Mainer, I loved that the book was set in Maine, but I didn't get a strong sense of the place

  • Review of This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me (Maggie the Undying #1) by Ilona Andrews

    This story started off strong: fascinating, fun, elaborately plotted, and irresistible.

  • Review of VenCo by Cherie Dimaline

    company...but she and her grandmother are folded into what feels like an oddly tight-knit community of women about the premise of a sleek, powerful company serving as a front for a coven of witches pulling the strings

  • My Twelve Favorite 2020 Books

    One standout for me was the strength of the women in the face of men's abuses of power and physical cruelty gender roles and the reimagining of a rigid faith, marriage/child/parental/educational expectations for women , adventure, strong female loyalty and friendship, love, and lots of fascinating details of life at the a young volunteer, Bridie, over the course of three tumultuous days as the fiery, complex, capable women Donoghue immersed me so fully in the moment-by-moment health and emotional crises; the women's determined

  • Review of The Names by Florence Knapp

    Cora is a strong young ballet dancer when she meets her future husband, and it is excruciating to repeatedly

  • Review of A Restless Truth (Last Binding #2) by Freya Marske

    manner in which Violet attempted to free herself from the shackles of marriage and the subsummation of a woman me of the measures taken by the main protagonist in another book I recently read, A Study of Scarlet Women

  • Three Books I'm Reading Now, 4/11/22 Edition

    Story, Dana Schwartz's young adult gothic mystery, it's 1817 in Edinburgh, and Hazel Sinnett is a young woman desperate to become something women in her time do not: a surgeon. But when she's kicked out of his lectures because she's a woman, she realizes a chance encounter with particularly inclined to search for opioid drug addicts like her--in fact, no one seems to believe the young woman

  • Review of Miss Morgan's Book Brigade by Janet Skeslien Charles

    not only helps rebuild communities destroyed by war, but along with her ambitious, inspired team of women for a book topic when she stumbles upon the bare-bones story of Jessie and the Cards, as the group of women

  • Three Books I'm Reading Now, 2/21/22 Edition

    late grandmother, based on voicemails from and exchanges with with the formidable, fiercely loving woman She's reporting on the case of Meena, a Hindu woman who was brutally punished by her village and her Through Bell's voice we also learn what has shaped the other women of the family: we hear rich stories the difficult relationship between Bobby and her daughter (Kalb's mother) and how it affected each woman's Rebecca Donner's nonfiction work All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days is The True Story of the American Woman

  • Six of My Favorite Fiction Reads Last Year

    Frankie and Zeke want to create something--something strange, something people will notice, yet something The retelling swirls with family drama, intrigue, bravery--all centered around a young woman determined Years of Lenni and Margot. 06 The Change by Kristen Miller The Change explores the power of menopausal women In Kristen Miller's novel The Change, set in Mattauk, Long Island, three women cope with various challenges The tone of The Change is largely campy, as middle-aged women heroines unite against the book's sometimes

  • Review of The Second Death of Locke (The Hand and the Heart #1) by V. L. Bovalino

    in the story Grey, Kier, and choice members of their army are assigned to the protection of a young woman The magic in Bovalino's world is strange and the circumstances around the island feel like a grayscale

  • Review of Tilt by Emma Pattee

    regrets and irritations, and as a reader I was left wondering if much of it was driven by hormones and strong

  • Six Four-Star (and Up) Science Fiction Reads I Loved Last Year

    robot-focused story (A Psalm for the Wild-Built), the newest novel by the fantastic Blake Crouch (Upgrade), a strange The strong, ruthless, intelligent women in Harrow the Ninth absolutely steal the show--which is saying The story is full of heart and strange, captivating details of Chambers's imagined world--and of an unorthodox

  • Six More Satisfying Novels about Revenge

    Kate is a tough young woman posing as a male cowboy. The women realize they may know too much about where the bodies are buried--literally--to be allowed I loved the women's complicated bonds, their crafty planning, their fights for justice, and their ability She's asked to play the role of maid to an unassuming, wealthy young woman in a dastardly plot to take the woman's inheritance and leave her to rot in an insane asylum.

  • July Wrap-Up: My Favorite Reads of the Month

    This is a feminist historical fiction story in which women--long kept quiet and still, supervised to that haunts, challenges, and pushes them to take the form of a beast, whose presence only the bravest women I loved that brave women that drive the novel in both timelines. Lisa Barr is also the author of Woman on Fire , The Unbreakables , and Fugitive Colors .

  • Six Science Fiction Favorites to Dive Into

    Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey This sci-fi thriller is about betrayal and revenge, but it's not the other-woman Divya has crafted strong female main protagonists who navigate the sometimes dark, always complicated When her mother disappears, Josie begins to track down the other Girls, and together the young women discover strange, unique powers as they rely on each other and attempt to unravel their shared history

  • Three Books I'm Reading Now, 7/28/25 Edition

    When she emigrates to New York City, she is befriended by two strong young sisters, Anne and Alma, and

  • December Wrap-Up: My Favorite Reads of the Month

    Xishi is a beautiful young woman who makes her village in the region of Yue proud, for she will almost The ending is fanciful and strange; the tone of the book doesn't seem to be leading to a too-convenient This is epic but never melodramatic, and I was hooked on the Viking-esque elements, the badass women In the charming story We'll Prescribe You a Cat , a winding, hard-to-find Kyoto alleyway leads to a strange

  • Three Books I'm Reading Now, 4/8/24 Edition

    Heather Webb In post-World War I London, female lawlessness in the form of the Forty Elephants gang of women the Elephant and Castle men's gang, butts up against law enforcement, which only recently includes women When the two aspiring women's bids for victory clash, traditional female roles and power structures may

  • Six Four-Star Mysteries I Loved Reading Last Year

    But the situation isn't exactly what it seems, and when a woman comes to town using Evie's birth name I loved the key elements of this story: the capable con woman, the past coming back to haunt her, the In Steve Cavanagh's twisty mystery Kill for Me, Kill for You , two strangers, women bearing the brunt Ruth, a young married woman living elsewhere in the city, is brutally attacked in her own home--and the

  • Review of Before She Disappeared by Lisa Gardner

    character-driven mystery offers an imperfect, unassuming heroine obsessed with solving the cold cases of missing women She's an unassuming middle-aged woman and a recovering alcoholic who has a compulsion: to locate missing women and girls the authorities haven't been able to find. Frankie travels the country tracking lost women, moving into communities with little more than a change She cares about the women she's seeking, and she's not afraid to ask uncomfortable questions.

  • February Wrap-Up: My Favorite Reads of the Month

    I was intrigued by the intersection of the women's personalities and lives, and Beagin kept me consistently Big Swiss. 04 Looking for Jane by Heather Marshall Marshall's debut historical fiction centers around women's Looking for Jane is a story of women living in three timelines who are linked through decades by a mysterious letter--and by enormously important, recurring dilemmas for women through the ages: unexpected pregnancies parts of themselves away; she doesn't shy away from sharing the sometimes-tragic outcomes of pregnant women's

  • Review of The Librarian Spy by Madeline Martin

    can to help those in need--including giving away her own papers and ration cards to a hungry Jewish woman You might also like the books on my Greedy Reading Lists Six Great Stories about Brave Women During World

  • Six Fascinating Dystopian and Postapocalyptic Novels

    situation of trapped girls devolving into paranoia, mayhem, fury, and destruction, with a wonderfully strong thought the teen girls’ “magic” and their perception of it (and especially the perceptions of the men and women

  • Review of Legendborn (The Legendborn Cycle #1) by Tracy Deonn

    The first in the series sets up a strong young Black heroine who bucks tradition as she explores her wholly independent network of magic, inheritance, bucking expectations, and pending danger for her strong

  • Six of My Favorite Fantasy Reads of the Year

    This is epic but never melodramatic, and I was hooked on the Viking-esque elements, the badass women The friends-like-family element and deep loyalty is strong among the members of Jack's group, and the

  • Review of Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout

    Yet she is strong enough to cut to the heart of tough situations and to sit within the pain of them-- a bookstore when it was first published in 1998, forgetting the title, remembering that it was two women's

  • February Wrap-Up: My Favorite Reads of the Month

    The war and all its deprivations seem relentless, but for Cristabel, there is a strange and guilty thrill later timeline takes place in the time of World War II as Daphne, an intelligent and educated young woman Unsinkable. 05 Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino In Beautyland, Bertino offers a poignant, funny, strange Gwendoline has strong opinions and is feeling constricted in her prescribed royal role even without the

  • Three Books I'm Reading Now, 2/16/26 Edition

    Is Not About Us ; I'm listening to Paula Lafferty's first novel in a series about a modern-day young woman Then a strange man comes to town, telling Vera an unbelievable story of her true origins and her destiny

  • Review of Break Wide the Sea (Break Wide the Sea #1) by Sara Holland

    So many elements of this premise are favorites for me--a strong young female main protagonist, ship life

  • Three Books I'm Reading Now, 4/29/24 Edition

    I'm Reading Now I'm reading Kate Quinn and Jamie Chang's historical fiction novel about two disparate women 01 The Phoenix Crown by Kate Quinn and Janie Chang In 1906 San Francisco, two very different women seek Thornton draws both of the women into his world by offering to be their patron.

  • Review of A Power Unbound (Last Binding #3) by Freya Marske

    The friends-like-family element and deep loyalty is strong among the members of Jack's group, and the

  • Review of Return of the Thief by Megan Whalen Turner

    He is in love with and married to a wonderfully strong woman, Irene, "Attolia"--and she is the real power

  • March Wrap-Up: My Favorite Reads of the Month

    Our Woman in Moscow, Beatriz Williams's historical fiction mystery, based on real-life double agents favorite read of the month); How High We Go in the Dark, Sequoia Nagamatsu's fascinating, disturbing, strange 01 Our Woman in Moscow by Beatriz Williams This was my favorite read of the month! In Beatriz Williams's historical fiction, Our Woman in Moscow, it's 1948, and Iris Digby, her American , she uses a fascinating story structure to explore different potential paths for interlinked young women

  • Six Captivating Nordic Stories

    hand, and dabbling in the Sami traditions of runes, poppets, or the playing of drums—or simply being a strong-willed woman helping to feed a village by manning fishing boats when the men are all lost—is enough to lead said to be humorous, and it includes Vikings, seafaring adventure, “nefarious company,” a town run by women The main protagonist Kristin is a headstrong woman, and she escapes a convent for love. Check.

  • Six Historical Fiction Books I Loved in the Past Year

    and the rigid views of the period about women, marriage, sex, politics, public and private behavior—and between what feels frivolous and what is Ava's meaningful growth, including her important role in the women Meanwhile, privileged Charlotte has her own secrets, and when both women's true situations begin to be detail the hardscrabble life of a newly freed black person—and the often desperate circumstances of women (especially black women) without men to protect them at the time.

  • Six of My Favorite Rom-Com Reads of the Year

    Mackenzie is a sports agent who's constantly fighting against misogyny and double standards as one of few women and refusal to bend to societal pressures--whether by behaving in a more tough manner because she's a woman in a career where fewer women exist, or by using her femininity as a tool in that career.

  • Review of Namesake by Adrienne Young

    Namesake is the second and, sadly, final book in Young's duology about the wonderfully strong, ruthless , clever young seafaring woman, Fable.

  • Review of Unlikely Animals by Annie Hartnett

    Hartnett evokes a sense of place so strong, the town felt like a character itself. Unlikely Animals is sweet and wonderfully strange, and Hartnett employs a light touch and thoughtful

  • Review of The Boy from the Sea by Garrett Carr

    And their mother Christine is strong-willed and a force within the family, yet she has barely extricated

  • Review of The Last Legacy by Adrienne Young

    In Young's story, loosely set in the world of her Fable series, strong young Bryn fights for her own I was thrilled to find that Young's wonderful, signature strong-young-female protagonist-in-a-man's-world

  • Three Books I'm Reading Now, 8/14/23 Edition

    and The Painter. 03 A Conspiracy in Belgravia (Lady Sherlock #2) by Sherry Thomas A Study in Scarlet Women irresistible heroine, but a fascinating examination of gender in Victorian society--and what happens when women returns in all of her feisty, unconventional, clever glory, despite the significant constraints on women

Connect on Bossy social media
  • Instagram
  • Facebook
Join the Bossy Bookworm mailing list!

You'll hear first about Bossy book reviews and reading ideas.

© 2020 by Bossy Bookworm

bottom of page