Books by female authors I really enjoyed in 2023-2025

At the beginning of 2023, I decided that I wanted to read more books by female authors, especially contemporary ones, for I knew next to nothing about that despite being a self-proclaimed bookworm.

I am glad I made that decision. Over the past 2 years, I have read quite a few novels by female authors that I greatly enjoyed. Today, I am writing to share a few of my favourite books at the moment, hoping to inspire someone else who also wants to get into contemporary female authors and needs some recommendation.

1.Circe by Madeline Miller

As a literature major, I've got a confession to make : I have yet to read Homer, whose works are among the required books for classes I took a few years ago. Somehow for me, someone who reads classics (as in : 19th century), Homer is almost too classic for me and I still need a lot of motivation to even pick up The Odyssey.

Before you wonder why this would even be relevant : Circe is a character from The Odyssey, daughter of the sun god Helios and the Oceanid nymph Perse (making her a minor deity herself) who is most famous for turning Odysseus' men into pigs, before living with him and his crew for a year on her island.

In her book, Madeline Miller does a beautiful retelling from Circe's perspective : how she was betrayed by her lover and seeked revenge, how she was exiled to an island to become the witch she was meant to be, her encounters with mortals and gods alike ... For someone who didn't really know much about Greek mythology before, Circe was surprisingly easy to get into. Once in a while, I would stop to search for characters names that came up : thanks to Madeline Miller, I am more ready than ever to start reading Homer when I get the chance (of course, I will need a good translation).

Three of the many beautiful quotes from Circe :

"Gods pretend to be parents," I said, "but they are children, clapping their hands and shouting for more."

Overhead the constellations dip and wheel. My divinity shines in me like the last rays of the sun before they drown in the sea. I thought once that gods are the opposite of death, but I see now they are more dead than anything, for they are unchanging, and can hold nothing in their hands.

All my life I have been moving forward, and now I am here. I have a mortal's voice, let me have the rest. I lift the brimming bowl to my lips and drink.

2. The Hunger Games : The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, by Suzanne Collins

By giving us the backstory of the biggest villain in the original books, Coriolanus Snow turned President Snow, Collins presents us with a wonderful example of "how to write about the villain's past without pressuring the readers into excusing his wrongdoings". I still hated Snow after reading the book : I just felt a new sense of pity for his many choices that led him to darkness and made him the heartless dictator he finally became. If anything, I hate him even more for still choosing darkness despite being surrounded by so many kind souls that could've changed him.

Léonie (@The Book Leo), a Dutch creator on Youtube I really like, has on her channel an amazing video analysing the book in depth : The new Hunger Games prequel is genius and here's why https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6byCPzqJyf0

3. The Song of Achilles, by Madeline Miller

In this book, the author takes inspiration from another work of Homer's that I have yet to read in its entirety : Illiad. Achilles is no other than the hero of the Trojan War himself, "the greatest of all Greek warriors".

For some reason, The Song of Achilles has been marketed as a "sexy, dangerous, mystical" book by some, which wasn't necessarily appealing for someone like me, an asexual reader who doesn't really care and thought it would be a boring read (unpopular opinion : the amount of sex scenes in Sally Rooney's Normal People was one of the reason that I didn't enjoy reading it, despite the beautiful writing). In other words, I almost didn't read it : but I'm glad I did because, "surprisingly", it is much more than just Achilles and Patroclus's love story (the nature of their relationship - that is, platonic or romantic - has been a subject of dispute over the years) catered to the contemporary eye. On the contrary, it is a story about friendship, responsibility, companionship and so much more : throughout the book, we see two young men grow as they learn important life lessons. Even the side characters, for exemple Briseis (captivated slave woman) and Thetis (sea nymph and Achilles' mother), are incredibly memorable.

My opinions on The Song of Achilles and Circe are pretty similar : there is nothing wrong, for the general public, to start with mythology retellings to get familiar with the characters and then read the classics (it would even be nice, for the more patient ones, to compare characters in different versions of the stories). For me, it is also very refreshing to see female authors like Madeline Miller who take inspiration from classic sources and give the characters their own back story (especially female characters who traditionally only get minimal description) : if anything, I am grateful that there is still room for interpretation when it comes to great stories from the past.

4. Five Feet Apart, by Rachel Lippincott

"Another story about sick teenagers", thought my The Fault in Our Stars- loving self before watching the movie adaptation that, according to three of my friends, so good that it made them cry.

In the end, it didn't make me cry, but worse : I was so overwhelmed (in a good way) that I continued staring at my computer screen after it was finished. Halfway through the movie, actually, I knew it was getting deep : to this day I'm still not over what happened to one of the side characters. A side character.

Now about the book (as I write this part after procrastinating for a long time, I realise that I remember less about the details than how the book made me feel).

Reading the book after watching the movie felt like watching a TV series adaptation of the movie, except for that it's with the exact same cast and playing only in your mind - or in between the words, if you will. Like a lot of YA novels today, the story flips between the perspectives of the two main characters, making it possible for us to go inside their brains to understand the whole picture even better. The side character's backstory is also something that hit all the right spots for me, something that contributes greatly to the depth of the story (I am trying so hard not to spoil anything here).

5. Everything, everything, by Nicolas Yoon

Again, I watched the movie adaptation first, so the book in itself was nothing too surprising for me. This being said, I remember my reaction when I reached the end of the movie : "WHAT ?!", so that says a lot about the story.

What are you supposed to do, if you're a teenager with a rare disease and a loving family who does everything to protect you from getting sick ? Can love really hold you in this kind of situation, or on the contrary, suffocate you with too much attention and too little freedom ? These are a few questions this book seeks to answer with a story pulling at your heartstrings with every turn of the page.

6. Betty, by Tiffany McDaniel

I hesitated to read this book when I found it on a shared bookshelf : "A girl comes of age against the knife", "a white mother and a Cherokee father", reads the back cover of the book. Did I really want to dive into this story when I've still got unhealed parts from my childhood and am currently having an identity crisis about who I am and to which culture I belong (an interesting topic for another blog article, I guess).

In the end, I was so glad that I did pick up the book and read it.Taking inspiration from the life story of her own mother's, the author provided us with this wonderful read filled with emotions and natural reflections a mixed girl in that day and age would feel and have. Deeply touched by this story, I even wrote to Ms McDaniel on Instagram, a message to which she kindly replied.

The book did not end my identity crisis, but I do feel slightly more at peace with having one.

7. The Emily Wilde series, by Heather Fawcett

Finally, I would like to talk about the Emily Wilde series by the brilliant Heather Faucett.

Labelled generally as "cosy fantasy" by its readers, the series dives into the adventures of Emily Wilde, a young professor specialising in faeries and a quite special friend of hers also working in the same field. A beautifully written story set in the early 1900s with a main character I can actually relate to personally, not only because of our personalities, but also because we are both in academics (I'm a 5th year PhD student) : I would not want to change a thing about these books that don't just tickle my brain, but also feel like me.

There you have it, dear readers of my long overdue book recommendation : feel free to comment your thoughts on these books if you want to read any of them, or if you have already read some.

Love always,

Mélodie