This book is a must-listen in the age of #MeToo and #TimesUp. Katniss Everdeen (The Hunger Games), Bella Swan (Twilight), Tris Prior (Divergent), and other strong and resourceful characters have decimated the fairy-tale archetype of the helpless girl waiting to be rescued.

Giving as good as they get, these young women access reserves of aggression to liberate themselves. But who truly benefits? By meeting violence with violence, are women turning victimization into entertainment? Are they playing out old fantasies, institutionalizing their abuse?

In Hunting Girls, Kelly Oliver examines popular culture's fixation on representing young women as predators and prey and the implication that violence - especially sexual violence - is an inevitable, perhaps even celebrated, part of a woman's maturity.

In such films as Kick-Ass (2010), The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011), and Maleficent (2014), power, control, and danger drive the story, but traditional relationships of care constrict the narrative. Even the protagonist's love interest adds to her suffering.

To underscore the threat of these depictions, Oliver locates their manifestation of violent sex in the growing prevalence of campus rape, the valorization of woman's lack of consent, and the new urgency to implement affirmative consent apps and policies.

The book is published by Columbia University Press. The audiobook is published by University Press Audiobooks.

Praise for the book:

"A must read for scholars and students." (Choice)

"Essential reading..." (E. Ann Kaplan, author of Climate Trauma: Foreseeing the Future in Dystopian Film and Fiction)

"A challenging, disturbing, and enlightening book." (Barbara Creed, author of The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis)