The Book Barbies: Strong Heroines |Day 1|: Finley from There You'll Find Me

If you're not aware, March 8th is International Women’s Day, and I thought, since I ALWAYS jump to highlight my favorite heroes and book guys without any hesitation, why not, for once, do the same thing for my fellow heroines?

So starting today Sharon and I will feature strong heroines worth, well, mentioning!

What are "strong" heroines? Well, the first thing that comes to mind is probably the obvious: any of the myriad dystopian/fantasy/paranormal world-saving gals, and kudos to them for saving the earth and all...but that's not what we want to focus on. It's all well and good to have destiny/prophecy/super powers on your side, but what about the regular women who are just as strong in different ways? We want to feature the more realistic interpretation and show all the facets the word "strong" really has. (And then Sharon will blow your mind with a fantasy heroine who showcases the word in pretty much ALL its aspects. Win!)

Racquel's pick: Finley Sinclair from There You'll Find Me by Jenny B. Jones

Why Finley? Finley is dealing with the loss of her brother by studying abroad in Ireland, trying to get a piece of him back by following his travel journal. She's in new land with new people and a whole lot of pressure from school, trying to her life back on track and dealing with grief.

To start off, one can argue that Finley is the opposite of strong because right in the summary it says:

"Once in Ireland, Finley starts to break down."

Which is true! With so much pressure on her shoulders, Finley does cave in and break down but the point is, Finley tried. She genuinely put effort into applying herself again:

"An assignment that could change my life?
Sign me up."

Finley knew that she couldn't be sad forever and gave her all to be happy again because she know that's what her brother would want and her parents and herself deserve it but, as I mentioned before, the results were sort of disastrous but that's fine, because Finley didn't stay down. She acknowledged that her method of trying to get better is not working and this passage just sums up everything:

"And... I'm scared. I don't know what I'm going to tell my mom. She's had to much sadness lately, I can't stand what this will do to her." But I knew I had to tell her.

"She'll be proud of you for giving her the truth," Beckett said. "That's all anybody wants, some honesty. And you'll go back and fight this. And if I know you, I think I do-" he ran his thumb across my cheek-"you'll come out of this stronger and better than ever."

This is strong. Finley not lying to herself about the fact that she has a problem. Finley accepting the fact that she needs help. Finley doing what she can for herself to get better. Strong doesn't mean saving the world or being able to beat someone up, anybody can be strong. Just have the drive to want the best for yourself when the world is basically against you. Anyone can connect with Finley! When you have 99 problems but you're still trying? That's strong!

I think Finley is a good pick to start off the event because the whole point really is to show strong does not just mean saving the world but could be something as small and helping yourself. Plus There You'll Find Me is a beautiful, beautiful book and I will always recommended it (-: