The challenging heroine

It's been a really fun time for the drunk writers over the past six months. Molly's second book in the crooked creek trilogy came out this week, and Maureen is ramping up as her YA Deviant trilogy gets close to being released.

It's been a remarkable experience watching these books, emerge from idea to first draft to finished product and along the way as critique partners, guiding what we loved and what thought needed work (not that much was needed for either of these books)

And then Molly's first and second book came out to some truly enthusiastic reviews and I nodded my head sagely and patted myself on the back for seeing the awesomeness in these books early on, and then some criticism and truthfully, and there hasn't been a lot, but what there was has been about what I loved most about these books.

Truly, I love Luc and Molly's ability to create tension between her two leads, but I loved, loved, loved Tara Jean from the first sentence describing her, to her wry, sarcastic POV voice and how she grew throughout the novel. It stunned me that not everyone felt the same.

And then the second book, I adore Victoria. This mentally battered woman creating her own place in the world and finding love and a sisterhood of sorts, (My secret is, I think I love the second book more than the first) and again, stunned that not everyone loves her the way I do.

I love when writers challenge a genre and by doing so make it more layered and complicated and fun to read. See also Sherry Thomas and Laura Kinsale.

But I think that's whats fun about interesting books. Not everyone's going to love them, but everyone probably has an opinion and they are the books that remain on my keeper shelves.