Book with strong female character

[BerfyTigot]

I'm so sick of reading/listening to books in which the main character is a woman without any boundaries.

Currently listening to The Woman at No.3, who is unable to tell her neighbour that she's too busy/tired to invite her in and she can't even assert herself with her 2 year old daughter.

She needs to get reading MN!

Before that I read a book about a woman who was bullied by her in laws and couldn't just silently fumed.

It's so infuriating. I want to read books with women who don't take any shit. Or who realise early on what's happening and nip it in the bud.

I admit, I don't spend much time choosing books, whether at the library or getting the freebies on audible.

So, anyone got any suggestions? Thanks, you might just save my sanity!

The Rent Collector by Cameron Wright. Has two strong female protagonists. Amazing book

The Belial series by R D Brady. Packed with strong female characters

The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah has an amazing storyline focussing on the women in WW2 who weren’t on the frontline.

Fingersmith by Sarah Waters

The Kate Shugak series by Dana Stabenow and I second Tanya Huff's Confederation books. I re-read them both.

Moll Flanders

Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead.

Body of Glass, by Marge Piercy. Shira, the protagonist, finds her voice and her boundaries. Her uncertainty and growth make her far more interesting and believable than the other women, who are strong women with powerful boundaries from p1.

Marge Piercy's books all have strong female protagonists (IIRC) but this is my favourite book of hers.

How to kill your family by Bella Mackie

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

Many years since I read it, so can't be 100% sure it fits the brief: The Life and Loves of a She-Devil.

I’m currently reading The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver (she wrote Demon Copperhead) which apart from being another unputdownable banger, is chock full of strong independent women looking after themselves and others. Haven’t finished it yet, so I’m not sure how that pans out but any wet wipery is not tolerated in this story so far!

That’s one I haven’t read. Saw the tv adaptation years ago and thought it was such a great story. She is indeed a strong female protagonist

Weyward Emilia hart
nightingale Kristen Hannah
the seven husbands of Evelyn Hugo T j Reid

The Yacht Party by Tasmina Perry & the follow on Lara Stone books.

Precious Bane by Mary Webb

Consider Yourself Kissed is a recent novel that I’ve enjoyed.

Recent books by Dorothy Koomson (I say recent because they’ve got better although to be fair her early books weren’t bad). I just read Give Him To Me. It is a sequel which I hadn’t realised but you don’t have to read the other book first although I wish I had as there were references to characters and incidents from it.

I just googled and Every Smile You Fake is the first one.

Try Anita Brookner. Criminally underrated. Superb stylist too. Hotel du Lac is about a woman rejecting marriage and asserting her individuality.

Iris Murdoch is a wonderful novelist as well. Her female characters do tend to fall madly in love all the time (so do her male characters), but she can do strong and gutsy women. Murdoch herself was a pretty impressive character - able to read Greek and Russian and French and Italian, professor of philosophy at Oxford, numerous affairs with both men and women, etc.

I have a soft spot for Jane Austen. She is too often dismissed as lightweight, but whenever I return to her novels I am impressed. She is just so damn good. And everyone falls in love with Lizzie Bennet. I remember a sweet old literature professor stopping during a lecture, sighing, and saying “I have been in love with Lizzie Bennet for nearly fifty years.”