Listicle: 10 books with unlikeable leads that we kinda love

These 10 characters lie, manipulate and cheat their way into getting what they want. And yet, we’re always on their side

Murder Bimbo (2026) by Rebecca Novack. We never know her name. We only know her as a 32-year-old queer sex-worker who has just killed a far-right politician. She first emails a feminist podcast introducing herself as Murder Bimbo, convincing them that she was acting on behalf of undercover agents. But to an ex, she recasts the same tale as not the victim, but a calculating participant. There are more versions, more revisions. Don’t trust her. But hear her out. The true story underneath it all is how women, sex workers and killers are consumed as stories.

The Coin follows an unnamed wealthy Palestinian in New York, who is deliciously dubious.

The Coin (2024) by Yasmin Zaher. The unnamed narrator is a wealthy Palestinian in New York, trapped in compulsive rituals of cleanliness and control. This could have been quirky, but Zaher writes her as deliciously dubious. She sees the poor as “dirty,” is transactional in relationships, neglects her underprivileged students while manipulating them into adopting her ideology. She gets into an illicit Birkin resale scheme! A hoarder with a cleanliness fetish, who never gets off her high horse. What’s there to hate?

In All Fours, a 45-year-old artist searches for freedom while deceiving everyone around her.

All Fours (2024) by Miranda July. The voice of the LA-based story is a 45-year-old artist, searching for freedom, but somehow desperate to deceive everyone around her. She abandons a cross-country solo road trip within minutes of setting off, and instead spends weeks secretly living a parallel life in a motel. Her husband and child know nothing, not even that she’s obsessing over a younger married man working at the motel. These aren’t acts of self-discovery, they’re just indulgence. But we’re here for the ride.

Andrew Boryga’s Victim is about a writer who manufactures stories of suffering.

Victim (2024) by Andrew Boryga. Javier “Javi” Perez is a Puerto Rican writer from the Bronx who learns to game the system by manufacturing stories of suffering, knowing that society rewards them. After a guidance counsellor encourages him to play up his father’s murder in his college essay, Javi begins embellishing his life. He accuses campus police of racial profiling. His hot buttons are racism, poverty, and discrimination. You’re not meant to like Javi, but he seduces you with his wicked charm. Who’s the Victim of the title, really?

Rachel Kushner’s book paints Sadie Smith, an FBI agent-turned-freelance spy, as especially murky.

Creation Lake (2024) by Rachel Kushner. Spy fiction is fertile ground for thought experiments. And Kushner paints 34-year-old former FBI agent, now freelance spy Sadie Smith (an alias) as especially murky. Smith infiltrates a commune of suspected eco-terrorists in rural France for information and reports, preying on their vulnerabilities. They turn out to be just environmentalists. So, she plants false evidence, navigating her only way through deception to come out as professional. The makings of a baddie, right there.

In Liars, Jane recaps the collapse of her 14-year-old marriage to a filmmaker. Where’s his POV though?

Liars (2024) by Sarah Manguso. Jane, a writer witnessing the collapse of her 14-year-old marriage to a filmmaker, isn’t conventionally unlikeable. She went in expecting an equal creative partnership, she says. She ended up cushioning his professional failures, by pushing her own work and identity into oblivion. Jane is largely living in her head (taking us with her) and it feels like a torture chamber. Every compromise is recounted, every resentment logged with forensic precision. We hear no other side of the story – which is why it’s so sus.

Kaveh Akbar’s book, Martyr!, tells the story of a an Iranian-American poet who avoids accountability.

Martyr! (2024) by Kaveh Akbar. Meet Cyrus Shams, 27, an Iranian-American poet who is newly sober after years of addiction. He luxuriates in misery to avoid accountability. He fills reams of pages with notes on secular martyrs, attends AA meetings only to argue over the meaning of sacrifice, and travels to meet a terminally ill Iranian artist in the hope that it may unlock the mystery of his mother’s death. Akbar’s genius lies in how he grants Cyrus self-awareness, wit, and an earnest longing for connection. He’s unlikely to mend his ways. We root for him still.

In Audition, we meet an unnamed actress who seems to be playing a role all the time. Who is she, really?

Audition (2025) by Katie Kitamura. Follow an unnamed actress, who convinces us that she knows exactly who she is, until a young man named Xavier insists he is her son. We see the world through her eyes, while she remains an opaque wall of uncertainty. She continues meeting him without resolving whether he is telling the truth, dragging her marriage, memories, and sense of self along with her. Kitamura presents her as someone who takes on her reality as a role. How else to create drama from life?

Shunali Khullar-Shroff’s book follows a sly but fun social climber.

The Wrong Way Home (2025) by Shunali Khullar-Shroff. Nayantara is that sly social climber we’ve all met, but can’t ignore because they are so much fun. The 40-year-old PR professional is blindsided when her celebrity ex-husband marries a younger influencer barely a year after their divorce. She’s broke, humiliated, desperate to matter again. The thing that makes Nayan’s story unputdownable is how much she reminds us of us, almost guiltily so, at our worst. She is vain and judgemental but Khullar-Shroff redeems her with humour and bullishness. You can’t hate her.

David Szalay’s Flesh is about an emotionally unavailable man, unwilling to heal from trauma.

Flesh (2025) by David Szalay. It’s easy to lose patience with István, who was only 15 when he entered into a sexual relationship with a 42-year-old married neighbour. It culminated in violence. He’s now in juvenile detention, all set to grow up to be another emotionally unavailable man, unwilling to heal from trauma. He enlists in the military, works as a nightclub bouncer, and later as a chauffeur to a billionaire. He enters an elite world where he can never belong. It’s maddening, and yet, you hope against hope that he finally finds himself.

From HT Brunch, August 29, 2026

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