Genna Godley spent her birthday doing what she did last year: handing over a reading list. On 6 October 2026 the bookstagrammer posted 31 fantasy recommendations, every one of them starring a female protagonist over 31, and she has already started collecting titles for next year's edition of 32.

What exactly did Genna Godley post?

Genna Godley's birthday list is 31 fantasy novels with female main characters over 31 — give or take a few years, as she cheerfully admits in the caption. The list went up on 6 October 2026 and runs as a carousel, one recommendation at a time.

The premise is the whole appeal. Fantasy has no shortage of chosen teenagers, and a list built entirely around heroines in their thirties, forties and beyond is the kind of thing you send straight to the friend who keeps asking for one.

Which books does she name?

Genna Godley names three of her long-standing favourites in the caption: Jade City, Nettle and Bone, and the Amina al-Sirafi books. Those are the recommendations she returns to, sitting alongside titles she says she discovered and fell for this year.

Some of this year's new entries came to her from the comments on last year's list, which is the nicest possible argument for reading the replies. A recommendation made in passing in 2025 becomes a favourite by 2026.

How did the list become a tradition?

The tradition started in 2025, when Genna Godley marked her birthday with 30 fantasy recommendations featuring female main characters over 30. The number climbs with the birthday, which gives the whole thing a lovely, slightly ridiculous internal logic.

This year's 31 is explicitly a sample rather than a canon. Genna Godley says plainly that plenty of other authors are writing older heroines and that no list of this size could hold them all.

What did readers add in the comments?

The comments turned into a second list almost immediately. Readers put forward The Witch Roads by Kate Elliott, The Last Hour Between Worlds by Melissa Caruso, and This Damsel is not in Distress by Tee Harlowe, whose heroine is 35.

Other suggestions came with the heroine's age attached, which is rather the point of the exercise: How to Find a Nameless Fae, a cosy Rumpelstiltskin-inspired fantasy with a 42-year-old heroine, and Swordheart, whose heroine is believed to be in her thirties. Ilona Andrews' The Edge series also got a nomination, specifically Steel's Edge, on the grounds that Charlotte's age is stated in the text and is comfortably over 30.

If you have been building a mental shelf of fantasy heroines who have already lived a life before page one, that comment thread is a decent place to raid. So, for that matter, is the request Genna Godley made at the end of the post.

What happens next?

Genna Godley has asked readers to nominate contenders for a list of 32 fantasy books with heroines over 32, which means the recommendations are open now rather than next October. She framed the request as a birthday present, which is a hard pitch to refuse.

At The Bookclub Boutique we have a weakness for a list like this one — the kind where the organising idea is a type of character rather than a season's releases, and where the recommendations keep arriving long after the post goes up.

Frequently asked questions

Where can you see all 31 titles?

All 31 titles live in the carousel of Genna Godley's 6 October 2026 Instagram post, one recommendation per slide. The caption itself names only three of them — Jade City, Nettle and Bone and the Amina al-Sirafi books — so the rest have to be read from the images in the post.

Does a heroine have to be exactly over 31 to make the list?

No. Genna Godley says the ages are approximate, asking for slack on titles whose heroines sit a few years either side of 31. The number tracks her birthday rather than any strict rule, so the list is best read as fantasy with grown women at the centre rather than a precise age audit.

Source

Based on material from Genna Godley (@gennareading), received October 7, 2026. Written up for The Bookclub Boutique.