Top Ten Tuesday: Scary Female Villains in YA

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Hosted by The Broke and the Bookish

Happy Tuesday, Wormies! Up this week is my ode to the scariest female villains ever. I mean, I am batshit scared of all these women, it’s not even funny!

An awesome villain can make the story really awesome, though. So kudos to these evil women because they did their role and really scared me. Of course, it made me enjoy the story more and, like all the villains in Game of Thrones, I was rooting for these women to get their comeuppance!

Since I will be giving names of villains, I would like to warn you that spoilers will be revealed.

Evil Power: wielding a sickeningly sweet voice and punishing students unjustly by having them use her special quill during detention. 

I think you will all agree with me that Dolores Umbridge is a REALLY, REALLY EVIL WOMAN! From her cat-filled pink office to her support of the Dark Lord AND wearing one of the 7 Horcruxes, to forcing Harry to write “I shall tell no lies” during detention, she was the second mot evil person in the Harry Potter series.

Evil Power: Stealing the souls of other children and possessing of soulless button eyes.

Technically Coraline is a Middle-Grade book but I will list it here. I read this back in 2005 and I can still recall the creepiness of the whole story. Plus, the other mother was another level of EVIL! And can you just imagine buttons for eyes? And that scary hand? I swear I had nightmares for a couple of days after reading it!

Evil Power: Developing a biological weapon and starting an epidemic on Earth, developing a wolflike army to start coordinated attacks on the people of Earth. Plus the creepy veil.

One of the craziest baddies is Queen Levana. Sure, we got her backstory but she is just creepy! Imagine not seeing her face when she’s talking to you? Her fear of mirrors and Lunar shells is legendary. She is also hell bent on marrying Kai to take over Earth.

Evil Power: Creating three tests for Feyre to overcome, one of which involves a huge worm *shudder* killing a human for her pleasure while hanging her body in the throne room.

Amarantha is one evil woman. Picture this, she takes a human (who she thinks is Feyre) and tortures and kills her while displaying her body in her throne room. Not only that, she creates three tests for Feyre that become scarier and scarier. She also doesn’t possess a heart and doesn’t seem to have any guilt.

Evil Power: Immortality including the power to create a blood pact with the male fae. Plus, we really don’t know her true motives.

Queen Maeve is more or less Aelin’s aunt? (Or something like that. I’m not sure anymore with all these characters with weird names!!) She is also one of the scariest female villains that I’ve read in YA literature because we honestly don’t know what her motives are. We know she is evil. We know she hungers for power. But we still don’t know what her role is in the scheme of things. Plus, Empire of Shadows really showed her evilness pretty well.

Do you love reading about books with female villains? Are there any other female villains that I should know about? Do you think that villains make or break a book?

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