HC Round-Up: Books By Female Authors We Loved This Year

How many times have you found yourself getting lost in the pages of a book? The setting, the characters, the storyline, makes you feel like you're a part of the book in some way or another. Authors have a way with words, which is why in some cases it's impossible to put the book down and return to reality.

2021 saw a host of new releases, and some of these books were a great source of entertainment and information on the various themes they covered. Here are our picks:

The Startup Wife, Tahmina Anam

Tahmima Anam's new novel, The Startup Wife, has been named one of Granta's greatest young British novelists. It is an investigation of start-up culture and the institution of marriage. When newlyweds Asha and Cyrus create an app that substitutes religious marriage traditions with contemporary cultural standards, they soon find themselves in charge of one of the world's most popular social media sites. Anam's engrossing narrative poses the question of whether technology can undermine love's customs and institutions.

Where The Crawdads Sing, Delia Owens

Australian fans have loved this magnificent coming-of-age novel and its devastating ode to the natural environment. Owens reminds us that we are all fashioned by our past selves as children and that we are all exposed to nature's beautiful and violent secrets.

The Dictionary Of Lost Words, Pip Williams

The Dictionary of Lost Words, set at a time when the women's suffrage movement was at its peak and the Great War loomed, uncovers a lost narrative concealed between the lines of a history created by men. It's a lovely, lyrical, and genuinely thought-provoking celebration of language and its power to change our perceptions of the world.

Island Queen, Vanessa Riley

Island Queen is an evocative portrait written by Vanessa Riley, based on the incredible true-life story of Dorothy Kirwan Thomas, a woman born into slavery on the tiny Caribbean island of Montserrat before buying her freedom—and that of her sister and mother—from her Irish planter father. Thomas, an entrepreneur who rose to power in the West Indies as one of the most prominent landowners, answered to no one but herself as she defied all odds to challenge the injustice of women and people of colour.

The Family Inheritance, Tricia Stringer

The Family Inheritance is a smart, empathetic, and thought-provoking examination of how a family's legacy of deception can poison all it touches, and how the truth may set you free.

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