Charlotte's Book Review's

Here is a very small portion of female characters and authors that have shaped my reading experience and taught me important life lessons between pages.

Richelle Mead wrote characters I craved to be when I was younger especially in Vampire Academy and Bloodlines but even now through strength and perseverance seen in her more adult series like Gameboard of the Gods.

Rachel Caine's character Joanne in the Weather Warden series is strength, sass and softness. She chose her path, blazed down it while it was hailing shit around her and looked good doing it.

Libba Bray taught me through A Great and Terrible Beauty that I didn't have to be an adult to shape my world or my peers.

Sarah J Maas wrote many, many female characters that all have aspects I admire. I think we can all agree that the biggest lessons were females are stronger together and physical power is not the definition of strength or status. I mean The Thirteen were a unit, a family and because of that changed everything. Where as you look at Elide, Sorscha and Yrene, I mean physical strength and mass did not make them powerful and iconic women that was all heart and courage.

Kirsten Cashore wrote about diversity and how acceptance of your fate didnt mean you became submissive or weak in the Graceling Realm books.

I mean Suzzane Collins needs no real spiel, she expanded the YA genre with The Hunger Games series. She wrote a female lead that cause death and distraction while battling with true emotion and the personal cost it may require.

Celine Kiernan wrote The Moorehawke Trilogy and I will forever be grateful. It was the first novel I read that wasnt a moeern day YA romance but something with adventure and a women with an intent to elicit change. She wrote a trilogy that bridged the gap from what I knew to what I now surround myself in.

Nalini Singh singlehandedly created my new love for the new adult/romance/fantasy/littlebuterotic books I used to jump from solely YA. The Guild Hunter and Psy-Changling series have female characters who are diverse and interesting, they are not clear cut carbon copies from on to the other.

John Marsden wrote the best Australian series of all time and no one will ever chnage my mind. Many of us dissected it in school but his representation of Australian grit amoungst all his characters, not just the women, was fantastic. Ellie was a revolutionary character for me to read about, she was tough and stubborn but John also made her delicate. Her moral and societal battles, and therefore impacts, where phenomenal in shaping strong adolescent women within Australian fiction in my opinion.

Jenny Downham wrote Before I Die the first book that made me sob. The first book to show me a sense of pain and peace all at once. Thank you.