Unlikeable Female Characters

I really enjoyed this and I've put a lot of movies on my watchlist!

Not sure I quite get the subtle distinctions between some of the character types that Bogutskaya describes (e.g., psycho vs. weirdo, bitch vs. angry woman, etc.), but nevertheless, each chapter highlights the injustice of the same behavior viewed positively if the character is male and negatively if female. She also excoriates the entire premise that we can't root for or identify with unlikeable women in pop culture. A quick but important read.

Easy to read and free of the somewhat prohibitive lingo of academic media analysis, Unlikable Female Characters provides a short and interesting history of female representation in American movie and television through the lense of the women we are meant to dislike.
I wish more time was spent on certain types of unlikable women but considering the amount of history and examples the author managed to cram in relatively few pages I can't really hold it against the book. I particularly enjoyed the author's criticism of the idea that women representation necessarily has to be feminist in some kind of way to be worthy (edited to add; this book has a resolutely feminist bent so please do not read this comment as an implication that the book is somehow against feminism).
I received an eARC of this book from SOURCEBOOKS through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.