Genre fiction is full of strong, independent women, badass heroines, brave Final Girls, and virginal princesses. Frankly, we’re getting a little sick of it? For our season finale, with us to discuss difficult women is the queen of messy, complicated, and antiheroic female protagonists herself, the legendary Silvia Moreno-Garcia!

1. Silvia's website
2. Silvia's Instagram and Threads
3. Signal To Noise by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (find out why Rachel is correct and all of the Goodreads reviewers are wrong)
4. Velvet Was the Night by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
5. Countess by Susan Palumbo
6. Unknown Number: The High School Catfish

Rachel’s Problematic Faves

1. Bellis Coldwine (The Scar by China Miéville)
2. Baru Cormorant (The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickson)
3. Essun (The Broken Earth by N.K. Jemisin)
4. Catra (She-Ra and the Princesses of Power by Nate Stevenson)

David’s Problematic Faves

1. Morgan Le Fay (Le Morte d'Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory)
2. Cersei Lannister (A Song Of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin)
3. Jadis (The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis)

Silvia’s Problematic Faves

1. Eleanor and Theodora (The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson)
2. Constance and Merricat (We Have Always Lived In the Castle by Shirley Jackson)
3. Everything by Tanith Lee
4. Rebecca and Rachel (Rebecca and My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier)
5. Emma Bovary (Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert)

Are they genre? Nah, but we still love them

1. Cass Neary novels by Elizabeth Hand
2. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
3. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
4. The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
5. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
6. Washington Square by Henry James
7. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy