Strong female characters

Use this forum to discuss the December 2019 Book of the month, "E-M-P Honeymoon", by Dorothy May Mercer
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tsh1001
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Re: Strong female characters

Post by tsh1001 »

Sue Lynn is the strongest female character. Kelly narrowly escaped to there or group? Only to call her cop husband and senator brother to save her. Sharon and Aggie came in and acted like a couple of middle school girls infatuated with Steve. Wasn’t Cynthia married to Sky? Who she had to call upon for help? Or was that someone else, I can’t remember, too many spiders in that web. It was nice to have so many women in important rolls, Kelly though didn’t stand out to me as a strong female leader though.
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Post by tsh1001 »

arielkiaira_ wrote: 18 Jan 2020, 15:22
ArielKiaira wrote: 05 Jan 2020, 18:33
amihughson wrote: 13 Dec 2019, 13:16 I have to disagree. I don't feel like the female characters really did anything to define themselves as strong. While it is interesting to note that the "bodyguards" are both females in a traditionally male role, as well as the terrorists team leader, them being female came across as inconsequential. Any single female character in this story could have been swapped for a man, and there would literally be no impact on the story itself, with perhaps the exception of Kelly. Kelly was written with more female mannerisms that even LGBT male characters would feel cliched if they exhibited the same behavior. As for strength, Kelly swaps between paranoia, hysterics and general uselessness. Tom showed just as much prowess with technology as Kelly is supposed to have (ie the part where he hacks into a database using his phone) and it seemed like Kelly's only real motivation to be part of "Team USA" was to keep an eye out for Tom and contribute to the supposed "romance" part of this novel. That's not exactly what I think of when I think of a strong female character.
I agree 100% with everything you said! Kelly's character was so wishy-washy between being a strong female character and being the weak little damsel in distress that everyone needed to care for. Agatha & Sharon were portrayed as "macho women" which is just using women in typically male roles to portray some type of female empowerment that the book doesn't have.
Don't get me started on how the author botched kelly's character....
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Post by readerrihana »

I guess it depends on what we see as a strong character. Also each woman has her own distinct character, and that will have strengths and weaknesse
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Post by siusantos »

I agree, Mercer has created really strong female characters who are independent, brave and smart. Damsels in distress can be tiring to read.
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Post by CherylTegan7 »

It's not enough to just have female characters in the center. They have to have depth, be well rounded, arc, and be their own person (not just serve the purpose of 'not being a male character'). It's great to have so many female characters in the story, but they have to be more than that.
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Post by a-b-c- »

I think that Men played a stronger role than the woman. Kelley called her brother Mike. Tom was the one that went back to check out the shop. And Steve was already watching Sue Lynn. Cynthia called her husband Sky and said that she had to wait for him. The girls Eastman and Sharon took Steve out at the shop. But I do think that for the story they were strong in their own way and did a good job like the men.
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Post by leiabutler »

I love the strong female characters. Reading a book and seeing how these fab characters react in situations really does inspire me in my real life because I think, what would they do? I think this book could have gone even further with them, love them. :D
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Post by sri varshini303041 »

Creating strong realistic female characters is not an easy fleet. Out of all, Sue Rhee was my favorite.
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Post by Momlovesbooks »

Many books now consist of female characters shown as strong and independent. Sometimes it seems like it is a “trend” among writers. In this book, the female characters had their flaws and could have been developed further, yet were still inspiring.
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Post by Barbie_sidhu »

Books with strong female characters are always great. From this book i would say Kelly was my favorite.
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Post by Jajachris »

I agree with you. there is a good amount of female characters in the book
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Post by jhunt »

I'm glad you began a discussion on this because I was thinking the same! I found it so refreshing to read a book filled with strong, empowered, and multidimensional female characters that served as their own protagonists and not a sidekick to a male protagonist.
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Post by Abhyarna »

so many strong female characters are not easy to find in a book.
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Post by Abhyarna »

jhunt wrote: 12 Jun 2020, 11:46 I'm glad you began a discussion on this because I was thinking the same! I found it so refreshing to read a book filled with strong, empowered, and multidimensional female characters that served as their own protagonists and not a sidekick to a male protagonist.
Exactly, I don't like instances when women are just sidekicks. If the story is about a male protagonist, I would like it to be without any sidekick and vice-versa.
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Post by Mason Garrod »

In terms of pure representation, the book was definitely great at putting women at the forefront in lots of significant roles. None of them were particularly well developed or defined, but neither were the men, so I wouldn't say that's a gender specific issue. Though I do wish Su-jin had played a larger role in the overall story, I liked her a lot to begin with, but then her character suddenly flip-flopped from competent to extremely timid out of nowhere, and then she dropped off the map for pretty much the second half of the novel
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