3 Novels with Strong Female Leads Worth Reading

If you’re a history and novel lover looking for some new stuff to read, check out the Historical Fiction genre! It’s truly one of my favorites to read. They read like novels, but they have either historical setting or follow a historical figure. The books I will show you today are empowering novels with strong female leads which I also love!

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Getting Back Into Reading

I just got back into reading as a hobby after stopping for a long time. I have a toddler, and I never had a good way to source books cheaply before. Until I remembered, duh, the library is an option.

And even better than that, Libby is an option!

Libby App

If you don’t know about Libby, it’s seriously one of the best apps out there for readers. You use your library card to view available books from your local library and check them out on your phone or other mobile devices.

You can search for book titles and authors and place holds on titles if there is a wait on them. It’s super easy to use and I’m a huge fan of the app because it got me back into reading.

Libby is completely free because it’s through your library which was a huge plus for me. You can read all these books on Libby, but I have also linked the amazon kindle versions as well!

Any moment of free time I have, I’m pulling up a book to read! So I wanted to share 3 amazing novels with strong female leads that you have to read! Spoiler Free, maybe slight spoiler for the 3rd book?

Why I Love Reading Journals

I love to keep a reading journal to keep track of my thoughts for each book. I will often go back and look through my notes and it also helps when I write book reviews!

Get your own Ultimate Reading Journal from my shop!

It’s an amazing resource that is instantly downloadable and reusable as many times as you need. Write thoughts, review books, create a reading challenge and so much more with this reading journal. I love it and I hope you will to.

Book Reviews and Do I Recommend?

Child of the Morning by Pauline Gedge

the cover for a book with a strong female lead child of the morning

Rating: 4/5 Finished in 2 Days

This book is a retelling/novelization of the life of Hatshepsut who was the second confirmed queen regent Pharaoh of Egypt’s 6th dynasty. The story begins with her life as a child and follows all the way through to her death.

Egyptian history is fascinating to me so that’s what initially made me interested in this book.

This story was a bit of a slow burn for me as I didn’t really get into it until about 100 pages in but based on the setting alone I was up for reading the entire thing.

At that point though, I was gripped in the story of a young rebellious queen who turned societal norms on its head in order to take her, in my opinion, rightful place on the throne as Pharaoh.

Gedge is extremely detailed in describing the setting which allows you to picture the scenes so clearly.

There was so much DRAMA I could not wait to see what was going to happen next even at the end! Between the forbidden love plots, the royal politics, the back stabbings and the religious imagery, I really enjoyed this book overall.

The character development was also spot on for me. I loved Hatshepsut’s character and I was rooting for her the entire time. 4/5 for me mainly because it was a slower burn.

Circe by Madeline Miller

Rating: 5/5 Finished in 2 days

This story was absolutely excellent and I enjoyed it from start to finish. It’s a retelling of the life of Circe who is daughter to the sun god Helios.

She is an outcast as a child, not as beautiful or notable as her siblings, and is clearly seen as a failure by her parents.

She is ultimately banished to exile on an island called Aiaia after she discovers she and all of her siblings possess natural magic abilities and acts upon them.

Throughout the story I had such empathy for Circe! She was treated so terribly by her family and she was so miserable when all she wanted was to be someone they could be proud of. Which is such eldest daughter vibes, honestly.

From her perspective, you get a wonderful story of redemption set in the Greek mythological world with all of its wonders.

I would say you don’t need a significant understanding of Greek mythology to follow the book since Miller tends to explain things along the way and she provides adequate details for characters and situations that are going on in the background.

But, in my opinion it’s fun to research some backstories of the characters as you’re reading to get more insight into them.

Miller’s description of the other gods was one of my favorite parts of the story. She does not hide the fact that the gods are cruel and selfish and only help humans or each other if it serves some sort of purpose for them.

This adds so much more complexity to the story, in my opinion. They take and give as they want, and this story shows that perfectly.

Overall, I really enjoyed this one as shown by my rating and the quick read time! Would absolutely recommend it.

Clytemnestra by Costanza Casati

Rating: 5/5 Finished in 3 days

This is actually the book that made me want to get back into reading!

I saw a tiktok video that said something like: “POV when your husband comes back from war after sacrificing your daughter” which immediately caught my attention, so I had to read it.

This one was a bit longer than the other two books, but the pages absolutely flew by.

Instead of focusing on a god as a character, this book focused on a human named Clytemnestra. It’s another revenge story/novelization that has a strong female lead of which I’m a huge fan, as you can probably tell by now.

She goes through so much tragedy which does include her husband and son being killed and her daughter being sacrificed to the gods for an extremely, EXTREMELY frivolous reason. This book honestly shocked me in so many ways.

I eagerly read through this book anticipating the event that the tiktok video alluded to, and there were so many more instances of betrayal that I could hardly take it.

Everyone turns on her at some point and it creates such a viscerally broken character whose revenge was long overdue.

As much as I loved this book, I do feel like the last chunk of it was a bit rushed including the actual “revenge” part.

It was a bit disappointing because everything had been built up for so long and you’re looking forward to this climax and it’s just over in basically one page and you don’t really get to savor it.

This book, like the others, has a forbidden romance plot, political scheming, a strong female lead, and notes of mythology sprinkled in. For those reasons, I loved this book and would still totally recommend it.

So that is what I’ve been reading lately! As you can see, I’m a huge fan of these novels with female leads and I think you should check them out!