7 empowering books to make you feel like 100% that b***h
Novels about self-empowerment often start from a place of disempowerment, challenge, or a sense of feeling lost. With struggle and hardship comes powerful and positive change that will shake up your life, outlook and relationships, enabling you to be your best self! We've sung Lizzo in the shower, so maybe it's time to heed her advice and be 100% that b***h in your everyday life.
For all the readers out there in need of some fiction of self-realisation to take control of their life, here’s our list of books centring on empowered women. Bring some main character energy to your life with these glorious reads.
The Power, Naomi Alderman
It starts with a tingling in the fingers, a feeling of focus, of a change in the rhythm of the world, a pricking of the thumbs. Power is everywhere, and the time is coming for it to change hands. What if the power to hurt were in women's hands? Imagine a world where teenage girls awake one morning with extraordinary physical strength and power that outstrips their male counterparts. In Naomi Alderman’s The Power, the balance of the world is irrevocably altered overnight. This brave new world is far from a utopia however. As uprisings and revolts spread through the world and after the initial delight in female empowerment subsides, a darker side to the new world order emerges.
By flipping the narrative, Naomi Aldermans reveals with blinding light all that women have endured, from the micro to the macro, in a staggering interrogation of the patriarchy and female power which won her the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2017.
Everything I Know About Love, Dolly Alderton
A spot-on, wildly funny and sometimes heart-breaking book about growing up, growing older and navigating all kinds of love along the way. It's a book about bad dates, good friends and - above all else - about recognising that you and you alone are enough. It’s a book full of heart that brings to life the struggles of early adulthood in all its grubby, hopeful and wonderful uncertainty.
From the beloved voice of journalist and writer Dolly Alderton, this heartfelt memoir exploring the messiness and discoveries of your twenties is a beautiful testament to female friendship and the joy of ordinary moments spent with those you love, as well as a refreshing untangling of navigating adult life. If you don’t know what you’re doing, pick this up now.
Queenie, Candice Carty-Williams
Caught between the Jamaican British family who don’t seem to understand her, a job that’s not all it promised and a man she just can’t get over, Queenie’s life seems to be steadily spiralling out of control. Desperately trying to navigate her way through a hot mess of shifting cultures and toxic relationships and emerge with a shred of dignity, her missteps and misadventures will provoke howls of laughter and tears of pity – frequently on the same page. The perfect fable for a frenetic and confusing time.
Candice’s Carty Williams’ highly readable debut is a sharp exploration of mental health and race, and the intersection of the two, following protagonist Queenie as she grapples with herself following a big life change. If you’re feeling lost or anxious, add this to your TBR pile.
Wild, Cheryl Strayed
At twenty-six, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother's rapid death from cancer, her family disbanded and her marriage crumbled. With nothing to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life: to walk eleven-hundred miles of the west coast of America - from the Mojave Desert, through California and Oregon, and into Washington state - and to do it alone. She had no experience of long-distance hiking and the journey was nothing more than a line on a map. But it held a promise - a promise of piecing together a life that lay in ruins at her feet.
Cheryl Strayed’s memoir of her epic journey of self-discovery, unbelievable strength and persistence, and the overcoming of her demons is sure to lift your faith in the resilience of the human spirit to overcome and achieve. Get out there, lift up the carpet, and see everything you’ve swept under there.
Girl, Woman, Other, Bernadine Evaristo
Teeming with life and crackling with energy - a love song to modern Britain and black womanhood. Girl, Woman, Other follows the lives and struggles of twelve very different characters. Mostly women, black and British, they tell the stories of their families, friends and lovers, across the country and through the years. Joyfully polyphonic and vibrantly contemporary, this is a gloriously new kind of history, a novel of our times: celebratory, ever-dynamic and utterly irresistible.
A truly unique, contemporary mosaic of the lives of black, British women, this Booker-winning novel is a celebration of womanhood, life and love, in its various guises. For a rich and diverse reading experience, get cracking on this one.
The Rachel Incident, Caroline O'Donoghue
The Rachel Incident is an all-consuming love story. But it's not the one you're expecting. It's unconventional and messy. It's young and foolish. It's about losing and finding yourself. But it is always about love. When Rachel falls in love with her married professor, Dr Byrne, her best friend James helps her devise a plan to seduce him. But what begins as a harmless crush soon pushes their friendship to its limits. Over the course of a year they will find their lives ever more entwined with the Byrnes' and be faced with impossible choices and a lie that can't be taken back.
A tender celebration of the wild, rich and joyous loves of your life, and the depths and ties of true friendship. Romp in romance and get nostalgic for being young with your best mate with this delightful new novel.
Really Good, Actually, Monica Heisey
Maggie's marriage has ended just 608 days after it started, but she's fine - she's doing really good, actually. Sure, she's alone for the first time in her life, can't afford her rent and her obscure PhD is going nowhere... but at the age of twenty-nine, Maggie is determined to embrace her new status as a Surprisingly Young Divorcee ™. As Maggie throws herself headlong into the chaos of her first year of divorce, she finds herself questioning everything. Laugh-out-loud funny, razor sharp and painfully relatable, Really Good, Actually is an irresistible debut novel about the uncertainties of modern love, friendship and happiness.
Maggie’s story may not initially be empowering, but it takes time and trouble to get to such a point of self-actualisation and independence. Written with bite, wit, and drama, Maggie’s journey to self-acceptance is vital reading for anyone on a journey to getting to grips with themself.
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