With a title like "The Science of Strong Women," it was reasonable to believe it'd be a well-researched and balanced analysis of women in life and literature, but it turned out to be a collection of a social media influencer's opinions and reading tastes that seemed tailored to appeal to her following, and provided little insight into women's issues and also lacked serious discussion of feminist topics.

I would've preferred it be marketed as simple personal opinions that have nothing to do with "science," as that creates expectations that won't be met by someone unqualified in the history and sociology of depictions of women in literature in relation to feminist topics, and so it was sadly a disappointing book.

I enjoyed reading about many of the most influential fictional women of our time. I thought the set up of each “chapter” was well done and easy to follow. The “lesson learned” was probably my favorite part. I also appreciated the concise background for each because I was not familiar with all of the characters, but it wasn’t over explained to the point it was hard to get through.

Throughout reading this book I added several books, shows, and movies to my to be read/watched lists.

I do find the title misleading as there isn’t much “science” involved so much as a compilation of important fictional female characters. So if you’re picking this book up based on the “science” in the title, maybe think again.

Overall I really enjoyed this read!

***Also appears on Goodreads

The science of strong women by Rhiannon Lee was really fun and I loved hearing about the impact these fictional women have on us as children growing up. It definitely made me think about how im going to choose what my child watches when they’re young and shaping their little minds. I also loved how the author described how feminism for each character looks completely different depending on where they’re located and the time period. Feminism has many different forms and it’s about being a pioneer for womens equality. Doing the best you can with what you know now. That being said, it was kinda boring to me. I was really invested at the beginning but I slowly just was getting over it.

I guess that this book really wasn't what I was expecting at all. I feel like the title is so misleading, and made me think that the author was really going to dive into what it really means to be a strong female character, and although the author did that, it was in a way that I hadn't really expected. I wish they had spent more time actually describing why the character was a strong women, showing more examples and revealing more of her story. I think that if the author had gone more into detail, I would've enjoyed this book way more.

One thing that I definitely did enjoy were the quotes and the lessons that the author felt each character to have taught. It made me feel like I really understood the characters better, and made me think about the ones that I was familiar with in a whole new way. I especially enjoyed the quotes aspect, as I love writing down quotes from my favorite literary characters. I wish the author had included more, as a way to prove their reasons why the character was a strong women.

Something I didn't enjoy about this book was that the way it was formatted made it hard for me to really be interested in characters that I wasn't already familiar with. I found that some of the summaries of the characters didn't offer me any insight on them at all, summarizing the book or movie they are in rather than the character themselves, which made the section on why they were a strong women harder to understand and follow. I really enjoyed reading the sections of the characters that I had already known and loved, but the characters I didn't know definitely took some more work to get through.

Overall, this book just wasn't really what I was expecting, and didn't offer the analysis of these female characters quite like I'd hoped it would. Nonetheless, it was still an enjoying and quick read overall, and I found myself loving the illustrations and the quotes presented for each character, whether I was familiar with them or not. I would rate this book around 3 stars.