There is no shortage of female leads in YA fiction, but strong female leads (that are not simply butt-kicking cardboard cutouts) are very rare.  They’re not nearly as rare as good female villains because there is only one female on my list of favourite villains, but they are rare nonetheless.  Here are my favourites in descending order.

1.  Lisbeth Salander from the Millenium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson.

What I love most about Lisbeth is that she truly doesn’t care what other people think of her.  She’s smart and independent, but she is also deeply flawed.  Because of all the trauma in her childhood, she has a hard time learning to trust people and it takes a very long time for her to develop any sort of relationship with Mikael Blomkvist in the first book, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.  She seems to have Asperger’s Syndrome  (or something similar) and she is not afraid to speak her mind.  But Lisbeth is not your stereotypical punk girl, however, because she feels insecure about her petite body and falls in love with Mikael, which causes her to sever ties with him throughout The Girl who Played with Fire.  She is my favourite heroine because although the book is mostly told through Mikael’s point of view, she steals every scene she is in throughout the trilogy and Stieg Larsson gave her an incredible amount of depth. Continue reading →