Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by The Broke and The Bookish! This week’s topic is book boyfriends/girlfriends…you know, when you’re reading a book and get all swoony about one of the characters. This is a bit of a tough one, for me, because I don’t read a ton of books with a central romance (which tend to be the type of books that make you all swoony over characters), so I’m splitting it up: five boy crushes, and five girl crushes!
The Dudes:
Captain Wentworth (Persuasion): This was the first Austen I read, and the hero remains my favorite. He’s loyal and good-natured and big enough to forgive a foolish spurning means that even though she’s an “old maid” (at 27!), the love he and Anne have for each other is just delayed rather than denied and this book is great and so is he.
Kolya (City of Thieves): Rakish and high-spirited, Kolya tends to win over everyone he meets with his charm. Especially women, and it’s not hard to understand why: young and handsome and endearing tends to be an easy sell.
Charles O’Keefe (A Wrinkle In Time): This series is so amazing because it has such great characters: prickly Meg, self-possessed Charles Wallace, and brave, kind Charles, who is able to maintain his own stable goodness despite adverse circumstances. It’s easy to understand why Meg loves him and it’s hard not to love him a bit yourself.
Eric Northman (Dead To The World): This whole series has a rotating cast of love interests for Louisiana waitress Sookie Stackhouse, but you’d be hard pressed to find someone whose favorite isn’t Eric, particularly in the fourth book, where he’s lost his memory and imperiousness and he’s just a tall, handsome sweetheart.
Jean Valjean (Les Miserables): A man who recovers from some previous missteps to live virtuously and devote himself to the loving raising of a child who isn’t his? If that’s not dreamy to you, we have different ideas of what dreamy is.
The Ladies:
Sabriel (Sabriel): Smart and brave and with powerful magic, Sabriel is enchanting and one of those characters who you can never forget once you’ve experienced.
Yvaine (Stardust): An actual star, kidnapped by a young man named Tristan to be a present for the girl he pines for, Yvaine is sarcastic and witty and it is no surprise that Tristan eventually realizes that he’s actually in love with her after all, because she’s great.
Natasha Rostova (War and Peace): If you can read this book and not fall a little bit in love with Natasha, you’ve got a heart of stone. Her spirit is what holds this enormous epic together, and the way she ends up still doesn’t sit quite right with me.
Ellen Cherry Charles (Skinny Legs and All): Tom Robbins is a love-him-or-hate-him writer, and I tend to be in the former group. Ellen is a waitress who wants to be an artist, and her struggle to figure out her relationship with her husband and the world and herself and her pride and vulnerability make her a winning heroine.
Bridget Jones (Bridget Jones’s Diary): Bridget drinks too much, can’t stick to a diet and exercise plan, and speaks before she thinks. She is a delight and I want to be best friends.