Alison Ames on ‘unlikable’ protagonists in YA

This post was written by Alison Ames, author of The Devourer.

The thing about a “flawed” protagonist, an “unlikeable” protagonist, is that very often—in the good cases, at least, the ones I love—they are a mirror, and we don’t like what we see. No one likes the girl who runs upstairs instead of outside when the killer is chasing her, and it’s because we know, deep down, in a similar situation, we might not be able to fight that monkey-brain panic-instinct that says climb. People object to main characters for a lot of reasons, but—especially when they’re women—unlikability really comes up a lot. I’m not saying there aren’t unlikeable protagonists! What I’m saying is that I like most of them anyway, a lot, because most of the time they’re just characters who do things we hope we wouldn’t do. And this is very often what makes them the most real, the most compelling. If you want to read a book about a perfect girl making perfect decisions, this is not the list for you. If you want stories that will make your heart race, about girls in whom you might recognize your own dark heart . . . read on. 

And if you read and loved any of these books (and if you haven’t, immediately go read them!), you might enjoy The Devourer. Adra Dantes, the book’s central character, is a pirate captain obsessed with revenge, single-minded in its pursuit. The future of her ship (and the entire world) is threatened by an ancient monster and she can barely draw her attention to it. She can’t stop herself from chasing vengeance, no matter where it leads her. No matter what it may take from her.

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Dare Me, Megan Abbott (2012)

Every single character in this book is a villain or they are nothing, inconsequential in the saddest way. And when I say villain I mean it and I don’t, because teenage girls are capable of incredible cruelty both intentional and accidental, and they are also soft and tender and afraid. Dare Me is about a specific and consuming type of love which Beth Cassidy says “is a kind of killing”. It is the love between girls, the kind that tips into hate and back out without ever losing its intensity, which is also how it feels to read this book. You don’t want anyone to win but you can’t bear for them to lose. Dare Me will leave you unsteady, surfacing for air feeling scoured and lost. Something has been taken from you, but not very far away. Like a slow-motion exorcism, a lifting up and out into the light to see only a dark handful of viscera. 

 

The Female of the Species, Mindy McGinnis (2016)

Alex Craft is vengeance personified, but she’s also a girl who thinks there’s something wrong with her brain. She’s okay with the things she’s done, but she doesn’t want to be. I want her to know she’s done nothing wrong, and that she doesn’t feel guilt because the monsters she fights aren’t owed any. She’s not on this list because she does bad things, at least not when I’m the one writing it. She’s on the list because she thinks doing those things makes her a bad person. I won’t go so far as to compare The Devourer to this book because Mindy McGinnis is in a league of her own, but I will say this: both of our heroines, if you really understand them, couldn’t have any ending other than the ones they got. 

 

Burn Our Bodies Down, Rory Power (2020)

No one hurts you like the people you love, the people you want so desperately to be loved by. No one hurts you like family. Burn Our Bodies Down is an exploration of what it means to be a daughter, to be a part of a whole, and how it is possible to love someone and hate them at the same time. Margot pushes her mother away, fights with her, feels a rush of pride every time she sees her flinch at some hurt she’s inflicted. And yet she loves her deeply. She loves her and she needs to escape her and she wishes desperately that they were a different kind of family and they can’t be. It’s hard to witness, but it’s also painfully understandable.

 

Monstrous, Jessica Lewis (2023)

Revenge is coming up a lot! As it should, since I am the one in charge. Avie lives close to Alex Craft in my mind; unlike Alex, we meet her before she is wronged, so we get to witness her descent into vengeance firsthand. We also get to see how her moral compass kind of develops throughout—the blazing hatred is tempered with each instance of revenge, some of them feeling more or less right to her. She never gives it up, though, which is very important to me. She chose her path and she can’t stray from it—she’s been changed too much by what she’s done—but she makes it her own, decides how and when she will give in to her monstrous side.  

 

I Feed Her To The Beast And The Beast Is Me, Jamison Shea (2023)

I love Laure with my whole heart. She worked her whole life for a promised future, danced until she bled, and they looked at her and said maybe somewhere, but not here. When you work as hard as you can, when you have more talent than anyone will recognize, when you’re desperate to be seen because you know, you just know, that if they would only see you they would understand that you are worthy of being seen, and it’s still not enough—who wouldn’t become a monster? If you have tried again and again to earn what you know you deserve and still the world refuses you, and then you have the chance to take it…how could you not? 

Get your copy of The Devourer by Alison Ames here.