Top 10 Tuesday | (YA) Books Every Girl In STEM Should Read

Hello everybody and welcome back to Top 10 Tuesday, a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish! This week’s topic was “Top 10 Books Every X Should Read.” As a girl studying in a STEM field and a lover of YA, I chose to focus on the top 10 YA books I think every girl in STEM should read. For those of you who don’t know, STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, fields which are not known for having many females in them. I study physics and I think it’s incredibly important to encourage girls to study in STEM fields and to give them relatable role models in those fields. One way we can do that is through literature. The following YA books feature heroines in the STEM fields.

1. The Partials Sequence by Dan Wells: In this dystopian, our heroine, Kira, studies biology, particularly genetics and pathology. I remember thinking she was one of the most kick*ss science chicks I’ve read about!
2. Illuminae by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff: Kady, our heroine in Illuminae is a hacker with mad skills and computer genius. A must read for girls who enjoy computers!
3. The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer: This series contains not one, but two girls in STEM! Cinder is a mechanic and Cress is a hacker! Bravo!
4. The Starbound Trilogy by Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner: In this sci fi romance, Lilac, one of our main heroines is a mechanic! You go girl!
5. Starflight by Melissa Landers: Solara is another female mechanic! Slay, girl!
6. Find Me by Romily Bernard: Our main character of Find Me is another female hacker!
7. Virals by Kathy Reichs: Virals features a main character obsessed with either biology or biological anothropology (I forget). Either way, she’s awesome
8. Counting by 7s by Holly Goldberg Sloan: I haven’t read this one but from my understanding, the main character of Counting by 7s is a scientific genius who uses her knowledge to help rebuild after a tragedy.
9. The Testing by Joelle Charbonneau: Charboneau’s book features Cia, an incredibly intelligent girl in the STEM fields who goes off to study at a dystopian university and take tests which will test not only her knowledge, but also her skill at applying it.
10. Catalyst by Laurie Halse Anderson: Another book I haven’t read but I want to so bad! The main character is a math and science geek applying to MIT whose world is turned upside down when something academically shocking happens.