The Little Friend by Donna Tartt
It's complicated: while the plot didn't pull me in like Tartt's other novels, Harriet is the protagonist I relate to the most. Tartt understands that the terror of childhood comes from a lack of autonomy—this is a horror story. She also does an amazing job of creating a character that's genuinely annoying while making the audience sympathize with her. Harriet sucks and there's no world where she doesn't because all 12-year-old outcasts locked in their childhood home-turned-crypt suck (not that I'm speaking from experience).
The evolution of Tartt's writing style is strange. The Secret History and the Goldfinch have essentially the same format, with a male protagonist reflecting on his past and telling it to the reader as he sees fit. The Little Friend's narrator is everywhere and nowhere, presumably because Harriet is incapable of knowing everything happening, and that's not a good or bad thing about the book, it just is. I hope Tartt focuses more on female characters in her upcoming novel. There's a sense that she as the narrator looks down on them (or shuns them—Donna when are you transitioning) that makes her male protagonists misogynistic, but her female protagonists multidimensional. Weird women and girls make the world go round./ ★★★★