3.5 stars.

Personally I felt there was too much of this book spent paraphrasing and retelling the stories of the heroines she referred to — obviously context is necessary, but surely it wasn't crucial to detail every narrative she drew from; I say this as a student whose synthesis essays were marked down for context/analysis ratio for years. But she did have some interesting original thoughts about each, and (more importantly) something she took from each, for better or worse.

So as a coming-of-age story this book does a pretty great job, even if it's not the best literary critique. The narrator (the author) was easy to relate to, to like and empathize with and root for; her arc is as satisfying as that of any of her literary heroines.