Feeling a little let down by the female characters in the summer’s biggest movie? Did Penelope, Helen of Troy, Athena, Calypso, and the rest of the Greek gals and goddesses deserve to be more epic than the attractive but flattened handmaidens even IMAX couldn’t enhance? If you’re craving truly mythic women, there are legions in this summer’s crop of mysteries and thrillers. I’ve narrowed the field down to three books that feature memorable women fighting their way through systems tainted by corruption, patriarchy, and obsession.
Heather is the second novel from Caitlin Mullen, whose debut, Please See Us, won the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best First Novel in 2020. Mullen’s preternatural understanding of young women who fall through society’s cracks and end up exploited by opportunistic men permeates both books. She captures that thrilling moment for adolescent girls when desire and rebellion intersect in the form of a reckless, sexy older man, then shows how it leads nowhere good when the girls are left on their own, without the kind of familial and social support most people take for granted.
