Getting To Know You... (6)

... Through Favorite Fictional Heroines

I figured that since I did best fictional guys last week, that I ought to follow up with their counterparts this week. This post is crazy hard to do because there are seven that come to mind right off the bat. It makes it even harder because women are usually the narrators in YA and I tend to love most of them! So in no particular order, here we go!

1) Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games- Of course I've chosen the lovely girl who was on fire! When it comes to girls that can take care of themselves, Katniss is so on top of this. She could walk into the woods tomorrow and disappear forever only to be found as a little old lady as healthy as can be still setting traps. She can hold her own in a fight, is amazing with a bow and arrow and really takes what she does seriously. She's not so silly girl flouncing around not doing anything. When she decides to take control, she does so actively. For that,  and many more reasons, I love her!

2) Yelena from Poison Study series- This girl is SMART. She knows how to survive and she's willing to fight for it, even with all odds against her and with a lifetime of torture under her belt. I love her acrobatic skills and how well the author (Maria V Snyder) puts them to use in the novel. She is fiercely loyal and can get through anything if put to the test. I also loved these novels for their murder mystery quality and enjoyed Yelena's ability to put together who-dun-it. She's my kind of girl!

3) Gemma Doyle from The Gemma Doyle Trilogy- Confined to an era that wouldn't allow her to be who she was, Gemma was one of the most powerful women I've read about in fiction. Being a witch, she allowed her powers to be enough to feed her through the rest of her everyday life. She wasn't afraid to go on an adventure but she wasn't a fool either. She knew when the danger was too great and she also knew when to listen to her gut. I'll never forget the girl who got locked in the church after going there on a dare by the mean girls.

4) Astrid Llewelyn from Rampant- The science nerd that will knock your skull in. Hello, Astrid is awesome. She doesn't even realize how awesome she is until the last quarter of the book but when she finally embraces it and busts through all the expectations everyone (read her mother here) has for her, she becomes a fully realized bad ass. Worse, she's a bad ass with a level head and a plan to change the future. She's fair, impressive in her hunting skills and * SPOILER* can talk to the most deadly and beautiful unicorn in existence.

5) Bea Szabo from How To Say Goodbye In Robot- I wanted to add a normal girl to this list because there are a lot of great heroines in contemporary fiction that tend to get overshadowed by the more kick ass females in the fantasy/paranormal genre. Bea, for me, is a modern day hero. I think she is because of her ability to really feel which is ironic because her mother calls her a robot. When reading this novel, I was amazed by how nonjudgmental Bea was. If you were nice to her, she was pretty nice to you and even when she made an unflattering observation, she said it more as a fact than to actually be mean. She also really cared what people said and really thought about the observations people made. She strong in a completely different way and by the end of the novel, I was so glad to see her have that strength. Bea's awesome!

Some runner's up:

• Maerad from The Books of Pellinor series
• Caitlin from Hold Still
• Tamsin from Once A Witch
• Jessica from Jessica's Guide to Dating On The Darkside

So what about you? Which ladies do you love from YA fiction?