Girls Who Slay (Literally)
So many times I pick up a book and am faced with the typical patriarchal ideal woman, a classic damsel in distress, and while these women always seem to slay in their looks I want MORE!!!! When it comes to books, I am always going to gravitate towards one with a strong female lead! And I know you dear reader feel the same, or you wouldn’t have clicked on this blog! Every one of these books below has a main character that slays in more ways than one if you know what I mean… I want them to slay the way the word was intended!! TAKE BACK SLAY LADIES and please enjoy reading about these baddies slaying their enemies.
Three years ago, Bella dumped her best friend Kerry to follow her dreams of becoming an influencer. It worked; she is Such a Lucky Girl, famous for her epic manifesting glow-up and dedicated to helping other girls be “lucky,” too. She’s living the dream—success, sponsorships, and fame. She burned her old life to the ground and never looked back.
Leaving Kerry behind. Alone. Angry.
When Kerry picks up a vintage self-help book on shadow work, she’s fascinated by the suggested rituals. Get back at those who have wronged her? Yes, please. She has one person in mind, and that girl is smiling at her millions of followers, having forgotten Kerry long ago. But there’s something attached to the book, something dark and ancient, and Kerry and Bella may not be ready for what is about to be unleashed.
Pretty, popular, and a total witch, Embry Woodcross is queen bee at Raven’s Head School for the Magically Gifted. Entering senior year as head prefect, Embry is a celebrated fashionista and unrivaled solver of problems big, small, and unattractive. (She’s quite generous with her handcrafted magical beauty products.)
When she meets Oakley Riddle, clueless transfer student and ultrarare vampire, Embry’s mission is clear: take the new girl under her wing and make sure she’s not thrown to the (were)wolves. Coven mate Rye Knighton may scoff at Embry’s aggressive benevolence, but Raven’s Head students reward her with love and appreciation…
Until one good deed too many makes Embry the lead suspect in a murder investigation.
Suddenly, the same people who begged Embry for enchanted acne potions are convinced she’s a cold-blooded killer. Apparently, everyone loves a witch until something bad happens, and then it’s all pitchforks and anecdotal evidence. As everything she’s ever done is used against her, Embry teams up with Rye to find the real murderer, clear her name, and maybe fall in love along the way.
After a party, four teens are in a hit-and-run accident that results in a young boy’s death. Unable to deal with the consequences, they leave the body behind and make an anonymous phone call to the police, tipping them off.
The group makes a secret pact to bury the memory of that night and never speak of it again, but when one of the girls receives a note that reads, “I know what you did last summer,” their dark lie is unearthed. With twists and turns at every corner, they’ll have to fight to stay steps ahead of a killer determined to make them pay.
After a vicious werewolf attack on the night of her seventeenth birthday party, Vanessa Hart loses everything she loves in a split second. Her best friend, her father, and even her home.
Bitten and imprisoned without explanation, Vanessa endures an agonizing transformation into the very beast that maimed her, and her captors make it clear she cannot escape: she will either swear her life to the Wolf Queen’s Court, or she will die.
With no other choice, Vanessa joins their enchanted Castle Severi—where flowering vines grow through the walls, gifts are bestowed by the stars, and a claw can break through skin as easily as silk—but she hasn’t forgotten what they stole from her.
Vanessa still seeks vengeance, scheming in the shadows even as she finds herself mesmerized by the golden prince Sinclair Severi, who threatens to steal her heart though he is promised to her nemesis. And by his brooding, disgraced cousin, Calix, whose smoldering gaze hides even darker secrets. Immersed in the magic of their whimsical yet cruel society, Vanessa soon learns not all is as it seems.
The Court is at war, and she may simply be a pawn in its lethal game.
Six hundred years ago, Nightweavers, cursed beings with untamed power, claimed the continents for their own. The ocean was meant to be a safe haven for humanity, including seventeen-year-old Aster Oberon and her pirate family. But after Aster’s brother is killed in an epic battle at sea against Nightweavers, Aster and her family are thrust into a new life on land.
When a handsome Nightweaver named Will offers the Oberons protection and work at his opulent estate, Aster is suspicious. As the arrogant and entitled right hand to the wicked prince, Will is everything that she has been taught to hate. But as he shows empathy and kindness, Aster can’t ignore a blooming attraction. And even more, Will opens her eyes to a new reality: There are monsters worse than Nightweavers, monsters who may be behind her brother’s death.
As Aster hunts the creatures responsible, dark secrets threaten to unravel everything she once believed about her family, herself, and her world.
Seventeen-year-old Daphne has spent her entire life honing her body and mind into that of a warrior, hoping to be accepted by the unyielding people of ancient Sparta. But an unexpected encounter with the goddess Artemis, who holds Daphne’s brother’s fate in her hands, upends the life she’s worked so hard to build. Nine mysterious items have been stolen from Mount Olympus. If Daphne cannot find them, the gods’ waning powers will fade away, the mortal world will descend into chaos, and her brother’s life will be forfeit.
Guided by Artemis’s twin—the handsome and entirely-too-self-assured god Apollo—Daphne’s journey will take her from the labyrinth of the Minotaur to the riddle-spinning Sphinx of Thebes, team her up with mythological legends, such as Theseus and Hippolyta of the Amazons, and pit her against the gods themselves.
A reinterpretation of the classic Greek myth of Daphne and Apollo, Daughter of Sparta by debut author Claire Andrews turns the traditionally male-dominated mythology we know into a heart-pounding and empowering female-led adventure.
Virginia, 1943: World War II is raging in Europe and on the Pacific front when Kit Sutherland is recruited to help the war effort as a codebreaker at Arlington Hall, a former girls’ college now serving as the site of a secret US Signal Intelligence facility. But Kit is soon involved in another kind of fight: government girls are being brutally murdered in Washington DC, and when Kit stumbles onto a bloody homicide scene, she is drawn into the hunt for the killer.
To find the man responsible for the gruesome murders and bring him to justice, Kit joins forces with other female codebreakers at Arlington Hall—gossip queen Dottie Crockford, sharp-tongued intelligence maven Moya Kershaw, and cleverly resourceful Violet DuLac from the segregated codebreaking unit. But as the girls begin to work together and develop friendships—and romance—that they never expected, two things begin to come clear: the murderer they’re hunting is closing in on them…and Kit is hiding a dangerous secret.