Friday Reads: Flawed Heroines FTW

I’ve talked (perhaps ad naseum) about tough heroines on my blog. How I like to write them, read them. How hard they are to write. So on, so forth.

So, it should probably come as no surprise that I loved Can’t Buy Me Love by Molly O’Keefe. I read a Superromance of O’Keefe’s a while back that I couldn’t get behind, but I recognized her voice and characters as something I would likely enjoy under the right (for me, the reader) circumstances.

Anyway, in this book the characters are flawed and damaged and not always nice to each other. The heroine has had a tough past and makes up for it by being strong, playing into other’s expectations, and being really unsure she’s worthy of being loved. My heroine trifecta!

There’s a lot of plot choices I normally don’t enjoy, but this story has this unidentifiable thing that made me care–deeply–about these characters and not bat an eye at events that normally have me rolling my eyes.

I’ve noticed that this is where my writer/reader self overlap. As a writer, I am so impressed by writers that make me like something I’ve never liked before. It makes me enjoy the book more knowing they’ve used this skill to get me to expand my enjoyment.

Filed under: Friday Reads