The purest joy of Summer 2023 has been the varied and plentiful memes celebrating “Barbenheimer,” that perfect, explosive cognitively dissonant confection – the high-speed particle collision of Greta Gerwig’s pink, feminist anthem and Christopher Nolan’s bleak AF meditation on the men who might have ended the world. I’ll confess it, every time I see “I am become death, destroyer of worlds,” in playful bubble letters scroll past on the timeline, I’m delighted all over again.
I did not know when I was writing my new book Knockout that I was writing a Barbenheimer read-alike, but here we are, and Imogen — the explosives expert in my Victorian girl gang, the Hell’s Belles — is, like Barbie, having a great day every day … by blowing up the tools of the patriarchy. This Barbie is Vigilante Justice. She comes with a group of clever and supportive friends and a hero who is the order in the face of her particular brand of chaos. He’s exasperated and unsettled by her, yes … but not so much as he is wild for her. It was a very fun book to write, and I hope an immensely fun book to read — as fun as the rest of the books Barbies on this list.
In Beverly Jenkins’ fantastic To Catch a Raven, heroine Raven Moreaux is a con artist and grifter who is forced to go underground as a housekeeper in the home of a former Confederate officer who is suspected of stealing the Declaration of Independence. Raven’s particular set of skills makes her the perfect candidate to steal the document back, but she needs a believable cover — which comes in the form of a fake husband, Braxton Steel. Brax had better keep up, though, because This Barbie is Fearless.
Fantasy lovers aren’t the only ones who will love Milla Vane’s A Heart of Blood and Ashes, the story of the most fearless heroine I think I’ve ever read. While he is forbidden from killing, King Maddek has vowed to avenge the murder of his parents … which means making the woman who has been named as their killer pay. But Yvenne is not what he expects. She’s the last of a line of warrior-queens, willing to do anything to escape her father and brothers and the fate they have planned for her … even turn herself over to a man who hates her. This Barbie is Fierce, and this sexy, primal scream of a book is perfect for 2023.
It’s Paris, 1899, and heroine Luz Alana vows to change her future and the world, alongside her two best friends in Adriana Herrera’s A Caribbean Heiress in Paris. After her father’s death, Luz Alana must prove she’s strong and savvy enough to take over his rum empire … despite being a woman of color in a man’s world, and the World’s Fair is the place to do it … if only she can keep from being distracted by that Scottish Earl who is showing his whisky in the next booth over … who becomes the unexpected partner she needs stand by her side as she takes on villains that threaten from all sides. This Barbie is a Trailblazer … and this book is explosive.
It’s no secret that I adore Kresley Cole’s Immortals After Dark series, largely because all of her heroines have Barbenheimer energy. Lila Barbot, the heroine of Wicked Abyss, is a reincarnated fey princess, who cannot remember anything from her previous life, when she apparently betrayed a boy who — oops! Became Sian, King of Hell. Lila won’t tolerate his fury — whatever it was that her prior self did, happened millennia ago! If he’s going to imprison her in hell? She’s going to rule it. This Barbie is an Unabashed Queen.
Barbenheimer fans love a heroine who can get herself out of any tricky situation, and Florence Greene from Joanna Shupe’s The Prince of Broadway is the platonic ideal of this particular heroine. Florence has plans — namely, to open a casino for women. To do that, she needs the knowledge and skill of one of the most ruthless men in Gilded Age New York, Clayton Madden. And isn’t she lucky that Clay is out to exact revenge on her father? He’s not going to know what hit him, because This Barbie is Not to be Trifled With.
And speaking of backs against the wall: In Christina Lauren’s Something Wilder, heroine Lily Wilder grew up in the shadow of her father’s wild dreams of finding treasure in the American West. When he died, she collected his hand-drawn maps and notes and built a business taking tourists on fake treasure hunts — she has to pay the bills somehow, right? When her first love, Leo, turns up with a group of loud-mouthed, unprepared treasure hunters, Lily has no choice but to take the job; she’ll get them into the Utah desert and out again, no muss, no fuss, no losing her heart again. Except things go wrong, and there’s maybe a dead body, and possibly a real treasure? And Lily and Leo are falling hard … because This Barbie is an Adventure.
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