On Bookfinity, we know that picking up the right book is about more than genre—it's about mood.
Bookfinity Moodies: Empowering books of 2024
The top six empowering books of 2024 have captured readers' hearts and minds, offering stories that inspire, challenge, and ignite the call for change. Packed with diverse and inclusive characters, "own voices" narratives, and perspectives from world literature, these books spotlight strength, resilience, and the fight for justice. From transformative nonfiction to compelling fiction, these reads amplify feminist voices, celebrate individuality, and remind us of the power of solidarity. Each page leaves an impact—now, it’s your turn to feel their influence. Which one will resonate with you the most?
Agree or have a different opinion? Let us know by leaving a review of your empowering book of choice!
Empowered - 6 Nominated books that evoked the need for change 💪🏻 :
A Well-Trained Wife: My Escape from Christian Patriarchy
by Tia Levings
The instant New York Times bestseller:
"Today it hit me when he hit me, blood shaking in my brain. Maybe there wasn't a savior coming. Maybe it was up to me to save me."
Recruited into the fundamentalist Quiverfull movement as a young wife, Tia Levings learned that being a good Christian meant following a list of additional life principles--a series of secret, special rules to obey. Being a godly and submissive wife in Christian Patriarchy included strict discipline, isolation, and an alternative lifestyle that appeared wholesome to outsiders. Women were to be silent, “keepers of the home.”
All Fours
by Miranda July
FINALIST FOR THE 2024 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN FICTION
AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
The New York Times bestselling author returns with an irreverently sexy, tender, hilarious and surprising novel about a woman upending her life
A semi-famous artist announces her plan to drive cross-country, from LA to NY. Thirty minutes after leaving her husband and child at home, she spontaneously exits the freeway, checks into a nondescript motel, and immerses herself in an entirely different journey.
Miranda July's second novel confirms the brilliance of her unique approach to fiction. With July's wry voice, perfect comic timing, unabashed curiosity about human intimacy, and palpable delight in pushing boundaries, All Fours tells the story of one woman's quest for a new kind of freedom. Part absurd entertainment, part tender reinvention of the sexual, romantic, and domestic life of a forty-five-year-old female artist, All Fours transcends expectation while excavating our beliefs about life lived as a woman. Once again, July hijacks the familiar and turns it into something new and thrillingly, profoundly alive.
Blue Sisters
by Coco Mellors
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - READ WITH JENNA BOOK CLUB PICK AS FEATURED ON TODAY
The three Blue sisters are exceptional--and exceptionally different. Avery, the eldest and a recovering heroin addict turned strait-laced lawyer, lives with her wife in London; Bonnie, a former boxer, works as a bouncer in Los Angeles following a devastating defeat; and Lucky, the youngest, models in Paris while trying to outrun her hard-partying ways. They also had a fourth sister, Nicky, whose unexpected death left the family reeling. A year later, as they each navigate grief, addiction, and ambition, they find they must return to New York to stop the sale of the apartment they were raised in.
First Love: Essays on Friendship
by Lilly Dancyger
A "vivid, thoughtful and nuanced collection of essays" (Associated Press) that treats women's friendships as the love stories they truly are, from the critically acclaimed author of Negative Space
"A tender, unswerving homage to her found family, but also an insightful study of friendship as identity-crafting."--Elle
Lilly Dancyger always thought of her closest friendships as great loves, complex and profound as any romance. When her beloved cousin was murdered just as both girls were entering adulthood, Dancyger's devotion to the women in her life took on a new urgency--a desire to hold her friends close while she still could. In First Love, this urgency runs through a striking exploration of the bonds between women, from the intensity of adolescent best friendship and fluid sexuality to mothering and chosen family.
The Frozen River
by Ariel Lawhon
NATIONAL BESTSELLER - GMA BOOK CLUB PICK - AN NPR BOOK OF THE YEAR
Maine, 1789: When the Kennebec River freezes, entombing a man in the ice, Martha Ballard is summoned to examine the body and determine cause of death. As a midwife and healer, she is privy to much of what goes on behind closed doors in Hallowell. Her diary is a record of every birth and death, crime and debacle that unfolds in the close-knit community. Months earlier, Martha documented the details of an alleged rape committed by two of the town's most respected gentlemen--one of whom has now been found dead in the ice. But when a local physician undermines her conclusion, declaring the death to be an accident, Martha is forced to investigate the shocking murder on her own.
There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension
by Hanif Abdurraqib
LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD - #1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER
A TIME AND PUBLISHERS WEEKLY BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR - LONGLISTED FOR THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE IN NONFICTION
Growing up in Columbus, Ohio, in the 1990s, Hanif Abdurraqib witnessed a golden era of basketball, one in which legends like LeBron James were forged and countless others weren't. His lifelong love of the game leads Abdurraqib into a lyrical, historical, and emotionally rich exploration of what it means to make it, who we think deserves success, the tension between excellence and expectation, and the very notion of role models, all of which he expertly weaves together with intimate, personal storytelling. "Here is where I would like to tell you about the form on my father's jump shot," Abdurraqib writes. “The truth, though, is that I saw my father shoot a basketball only one time.”