Top Ten Tuesday #52

Hey everyone! I’m back with another Top Ten Tuesday for you all this week, courtesy of the lovely ladies over at The Broke and The Bookish. This week’s topic is kind of a freebie, as the prompt was, Top Ten Books Every…..(fill in the gap) should read. I have to admit, I was a little stumped as to what to do for this one, as I feel like I always do fantasy/dystopia books that people should read, so I wanted to see if there was something different and less predictable that I could do instead. I’m not going to lie, most of the books will probably end up being fantasy/dystopia books anyway, but I thought I could at least chose something different for the title of the topic. I’m a big fan of positive female friendships in books, I love it when books show girls supporting each other rather than being at each others throats, so I thought for my topic today, I would do Top Ten Books Everyone Who Loves Positive Female Friendships should read. So here we go, my favourite books which feature strong female friendships:

1. The Sisterhood of The Traveling Pants Series-Lena, Bridget, Tibby and Carmen-Ann Brashares

I’ll admit this series isn’t my absolute favourite, they’re enjoyable enough light summer reads, but I’m not sure I’d like them as much if I read them now as I did when I was a younger teenager. Still, one thing these books do have going for them, is that the central theme is the friendship between the four girls and even though they all have different romantic interests through the series, their friendship remains a constant and I loved seeing the four of them support each other.

2. Code Name Verity-Queenie and Maddie-Elizabeth Wein

I’m not even finished with this book yet (only halfway through) and already I love the unlikely friendship between these two girls. They come from completely different worlds and yet they are brought together by the war and they become fast friends and it’s a really lovely thing to see these two young women supporting each other through difficult times. I can already tell that this book is going to become a favourite!

3. Rebel of The Sands-Shazad and Amani-Alwyn Hamilton

Rebel of The Sands is such a great girl power book and I loved the friendship between these two girls, they are both strong and powerful women and I love it when books show that strong women can both be friends, they can support and look out for each other, they don’t have to be jealous of each other’s strength, they can support each other and help each other grow and that’s exactly what Shazad and Amani do. I can’t wait to see more of their friendship in the next book in the series!

4. Throne of Glass Series-Celaena/Ansel, Celaena/Nehemia & Aelin/Lysandra-Sarah J Maas-Okay I’m slightly cheating here by featuring three friendships in one, but they all have one character (Celaena/Aelin), in common, so I thought I could get away with it! Celaena/Ansel might be a bit of a controversial one given what happens at the end of the novella which features the two of them, but whilst it lasted, their friendship was pretty awesome. Celaena/Nehemia is also perhaps a little controversial, given how much Nehemia keeps from Celaena, but I did love their friendship whilst it lasted, because it showed that two strong females from different royal families could be friends. Aelin/Lysandra is a newer friendship, only introduced in the most recent instalment in the series, but it was so nice to see the two of them get along after their past history (shown in The Assassin’s Blade) and I loved seeing Aelin have a close female friend again!

5. Cinder-Cinder and Iko-Marissa Meyer-I may not have loved Cinder, but I loved Iko and I thought their friendship was great. Iko was adorable and cheeky and hilarious, and I felt that with her, Cinder kind of loosened up a little around her. There was no bitchiness between these two, just fun and laughs and support, it was great!

6. Chestnut Hill Series-Malory, Dylan, Honey & Lani-Lauren Brooke-I read this series when I was a pre-teen and one of the things I loved most about it, aside from the fact that it’s all about horses, is the friendship between the four girls, they are there for each other through thick and thin, they always support each other and I don’t remember there being lots of in-fighting between the four of them.

7. The Saddle Club series-Stevie, Carole and Lisa-I’ll admit, there are so many books in this series that I never read all of them and it was a series I read when I was little kid/pre-teen and it’s been a while since I read them, but what I do remember, is that the friendship between these three girls was front and centre in this series and I loved it!

8. Skulduggery Pleasant series-Valkyrie and Tanith-The star friendship in this series is obviously the friendship between Skulduggery and Valkyrie, but I love the friendship between Valkyrie and Tanith as well, even if Tanith is several decades older than Valkyrie, you know that both of them will always have each other’s back in a fight.

9. The Raven Cycle-The Women of 300 Fox Way-Almost all the women of Fox Way are related in some way, I think anyway, but I love the friendship between all of these women, they all have very different personalities, but they’re all very supportive of each other and of Blue and they’ve kind of created their own mini-family, which I love.

10. The Hunger Games-Katniss and Johanna-Whilst The Hunger Games does many things well, female friendships isn’t exactly one of them, Katniss isn’t the kind of girl that has a lot of female friends, which makes sense given her personality, but I did love in the last book when they finally became friends and helped each other through their personal fears, it was great!

That’s all I have for this week! Doing this list has really made me realise that we need more positive female friendships in our books as it was actually much harder to find ten examples of it than I thought it would be. I really wish YA authors would focus less on romance and more on friendships (especially female ones) as I enjoy them so much more. What are your favourite female friendships? What did you choose for your topic this week? Let me know! Next week’s topic is meant to be Top Ten Books That Will Make You Laugh, but I can’t think of all that many books for that topic, so instead I’m going to do Top Ten Childhood Favourites, because I reckon that would be a really fun topic to do. That’s next week, but in the meantime, I will hopefully have my first discussion post of April up this weekend.