There’s something irresistible about a woman teetering on the edge—of sanity, of propriety, of self-preservation…or self-destruction. Literature has been dominated for generations by heroes and kings and outlaws (and their damsels, queens, and Bonnie Parkers), but the last decade has gifted us a new archetype: the exquisitely complicated, morally questionable, emotionally feral woman who refuses to behave.
She may not get along with the other mothers. She may drink too much. She may stalk her ex. She may cheat, or steal, or lie—even to herself. She may kill. She may do genuinely terrible things. And yet we want to sit across from her at a café and say, “Okay, start at the beginning.”
In my debut novel Good Intentions, Cady, my protagonist, isn’t evil. She’s just…deeply, humanly flawed.
When her identical twin dies unexpectedly, instead of collapsing the way her family expects, Cady channels her grief into an intense new relationship with a stranger named Morgan, a mother who is struggling to survive her own tragedy. Cady is convinced that destiny has brought her and Morgan together on the worst day of their respective lives and she’ll stop at nothing—risking her luxury event-planning business, her marriage, and her deeply buried secrets—to secure her place in Morgan’s life.
What fascinates me about characters like Cady is that their choices look unhinged from the outside but, inside, their descents are fueled by love, grief, and—in Cady’s case—the desperate need to make meaning out of tragedy. These are women on the brink, whose messiness is simply the volume turned up on instincts many of us bury beneath niceness and propriety and social conditioning.
That’s what makes “unhinged women” in fiction so irresistible: they’re not villains. They’re women whose tautly-strung restraints finally snapped. Women who are chaotic, brilliant, impulsive…and uncomfortably familiar. Because deep down, what makes them so compelling isn’t their bad decisions or wild behavior—it’s the part of us that recognizes why they do the things they do.
Below are six novels featuring gloriously unwell female protagonists—women I would absolutely invite to brunch, after I hid the knives.
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Marisa Kashino, Best Offer Wins
Margo Miyake’s desperate quest for the perfect house in the cutthroat Washington, D.C. real-estate market spirals into obsession, blurring—and then just straight up trampling—the line between ambition and unhinged behavior. After years of losing bidding wars and feeling trapped in her life, Margo resorts to stalking, manipulation, and increasingly extreme tactics to secure the dream home she believes will fix everything.
Darkly funny and sharply satirical, I couldn’t help rooting for Margo even as her actions became increasingly, wildly wicked.
R. F. Kuang, Yellowface
Struggling author June Hayward steals the unpublished manuscript of her literary rival—the brilliant, beloved, deceased Athena Liu—and publishes it as her own. When the stolen book becomes a sensation, June’s guilt escalates into paranoia and terrible, desperate decisions as the internet, the industry, and her own unraveling psyche close in.
Razor-sharp and savagely funny, the novel exposes ambition, envy, and the monstrous lengths one woman goes to claim the success she believes the world owes her.
Oyinkan Braithwaite, My Sister, the Serial Killer
Protectiveness taken to homicidal extremes. Korede is a dutiful nurse whose beautiful younger sister Ayoola has a habit of killing her boyfriends—and calling Korede to clean up the mess (literally). When Ayoola sets her sights on the doctor Korede secretly loves, the sisters’ long-standing dynamic of loyalty, resentment, and shared culpability reaches a dangerous breaking point.
The novel explores what loyalty really costs—and how far one “good” sister will go to protect family, even when family is a monster.
Ottessa Moshfegh, Eileen
Eileen is a lonely, self-loathing young woman working at a boys’ prison in 1960s Massachusetts, trapped in a bleak home with her abusive alcoholic father, nursing grotesque fantasies of escape. When the glamorous and mysterious new psychologist Rebecca Saint John arrives, Eileen—desperate for friendship, transformation, and a way out of her stifling life—becomes enthralled.
Their connection quickly veers toward the sinister, culminating in a shocking act that finally propels Eileen into the world, but at a high cost.
Carola Lovering, Bye, Baby
A missing baby. A fraught friendship. A secret that can never be told. Billie and Cassie’s once-inseparable bond frays as Cassie embraces motherhood, wealth, and influencer fame while Billie feels increasingly sidelined.
When Cassie’s infant daughter suddenly goes missing, Billie is startled to find the baby in her arms. But it’s too late now. Billie must hide the truth from Cassie, triggering a tense, obsessive unraveling of their toxic friendship and buried secrets from their shared past.
Told in alternating perspectives, the novel explores the dark lengths one woman will go to reclaim a connection she refuses to let go of.
Ashley Audrain, The Push
Blythe Connor is a new mother determined not to repeat the cycle of generational trauma that colored her own childhood—until her daughter Violet’s unsettling behavior convinces her that something is very wrong. As Blythe becomes increasingly isolated and disbelieved, her insistence that Violet is capable of unthinkable cruelties drives a crack between her and everyone she loves.
What begins as ordinary, relatable maternal anxiety spirals into a chilling unraveling of identity, sanity, and the dark possibility that motherhood may have made her a monster—or the mother of one.
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