There is a spectre haunting the recent releases at your local bookstore. Both 2023 and 2024 have seen a spate of novels that follow an innocent ‘girl next door’ as she transforms into a ruthless feminist vigilante with a burning desire to kill predatory men. Although this sounds like the plot of a gritty thriller, these novels are actually pretty kitsch, with titles riffing on classic romcoms or taken from Taylor Swift songs.

These books promote a twee kind of misandry, marketed through stylish cartoon women on brightly coloured book covers looking mysterious and cool in their cat-eye sunglasses and a sassy red lip. Despite the catalyst for their protagonists’ revenge spree often being horrific violence or abuse towards them or someone they know, these novels read much more like ‘cosy crime’ stories: they may have an important message about violence against women or the failings of the justice system, but they are packaged as a fun romp about killing men and the friends you make along the way.

This new ‘twee misandry’ microgenre is similar to popular ‘good for her’ narratives in books, film and TV where women showcase their worst selves, often killing or allowing the deaths of the people (particularly men) who harmed them throughout the story. Think Florence Pugh’s ominous smile as Dani at the end of Midsommar or Samara Weaving in the bloodstained wedding dress in the final scene of Ready or Not. These stories play out a fantasy of female violence, power and control. While these characters are perhaps not intended to be aspirational by their creators, the way their stories have captured the popular imagination as darkly empowering tales of women’s violence and revenge has paved the way for this current trend of twee misandry. 

Novels like The Best Way to Bury Your Husband by Alexa Casale, How to Kill a Guy in Ten Ways by Eve Kellman, Look What You Made Me Do by Katherine Olson, and Katy Brent’s The Murder After the Night Before and How to Kill Men and Get Away With It are just some examples of this new microgenre. These books are undoubtedly popular and enjoyable judging from their decent ratings on Goodreads and the trend’s ever-growing list of titles. So what is it about them that readers seem to love?

Novels in this genre tend to centre around women killing men, typically in an act of revenge or carried out by the kind of feminist vigilante figures featured in Kellman, Olson and Brent’s novels above. The revenge fantasy mixed with a sprinkle of misandry is not entirely new – the rape-revenge film is a well-established horror genre – however, these new fiction releases are less psychologically chilling and instead are marketed similarly to fans of cosy crime, with their kitschy cover designs and cute, snappy titles. These books appeal to readers of TikTok-famous romance books too, often premised around the concept of romance ‘gone wrong’ like L. M. Chilton’s Swiped or Julie May Cohen’s Bad Men. 

It’s also no surprise this microgenre has taken off due to the popularity of true crime with female audiences, coupled with the boom in the romance genre and ‘good for her’ or ‘female rage’ stories thanks – as always – to TikTok.  

These books seem like a sticking plaster for the anger and fear for their safety many women have (not helped by the fascination with true crime). We know that the police and justice systems have an entrenched misogyny and so many deep-seated flaws that they have become largely ineffective at tackling violence against women, so it’s understandable that women may want to indulge in these fantasies of retribution.

But while these novels are often categorised under ‘feminism’ on Goodreads, they’re promoting a shallow imitation of it: saying ‘look boys! women can be murderers too, you should fear us!’ through the girlbossification of serial killing. It’s a fun fantasy, and one that obviously piques the imagination of so many women, but these stories don’t really warrant the feminist label. The microgenre feels like a strange creature born of postfeminist ‘girl power’, lack of faith in the police and justice system, and ‘we are the daughters of the witches you couldn’t burn’ T-shirts – it has got a point, but the point is obscured by shallow aesthetics. 

Emerald Fennell’s 2021 film Promising Young Woman was a contentious entry into the female revenge genre. Its aesthetic toed this same twee line, but it managed to turn this around with its shock twist. Dana Stevens, writing for Slate, said the film “can’t decide whether it wants the audience to cheer for its heroine’s cleverness and pluck or worry about her mental and physical safety”. This problem remains true for this new literary microgenre. How are they meant to be received? Should we be cheering the profitability of horrible, murderous women, of female revenge, or should we be worried about the emotional health of a society that has led to this popularity and profitability? 

There are works that play with this trope, though. The recently released Dead Animals by Phoebe Stuckes and Exile by Aimee Walsh both subvert aspects to give a more nuanced exploration of trauma’s aftermath. Similarly, Michaela Coel’s I May Destroy You, a dark comedy drama which follows a rape survivor Arabella, plays out various revenge scenarios in its final episode before Arabella ultimately decides to choose healing and moving on, rather than more violence. 

It feels significant that we are at a point in culture where a whole spectrum of female revenge stories are so immensely popular. It’s indicative of the fraught and fractured space that feminism has become in recent years: we all have different ideas of what feminist media is and what, how, and why we want to see these narratives represented. As annoying as this all can be, it’s worth remembering that a feminism full of conflicting ideas is ultimately also a feminism that is alive and kicking.