Hi dear friends,

First let me wish you a Merry Christmas! I hope you have a wonderful time!

After the best male MC it was only logical that we got to speak about the best female MC!

I have many fantastic female MC to mention here like:

• Harper from A Curse So dark and Lonely by Brigid Kemmerer;
• Moti from Moti on the Water by Leylah Attar;
• Miss Ada from Carry the World by Susan Fanetti;
• Izzi from The Exact Opposite of Okay by Laura Steven;
• Shay from Landon and Shay by Brittainy C Cherry;
• Elizabeth Scrivener from A Sorcery of Thorns by Margaret Rogerson;
• Annicka from The Girl He Used to Know by Tracey Garvis Graves;
• Dorothy Mayhem from Perfectly Adequate;

….

But my big winner really blew me away!

My 2019 best female character is Esme/My from The Bride Test by Helen Hoang

I know many are infatuated with Khai and yes I did love him indeed but be warned that here below you’ll have me all fangirling over Esme! Because I so dig that girl!

Esme or My has no college education, she earned her life scrubbing toilets but when given the opportunity, she really did try to give more to her family. She was humble in the way poor people or less educated people often are but she was also smart and courageous. She was hard working and determined to be worthy.

When she had setbacks, when she was confronted to Khai’s sisters or other educated and poised women she doubted as many would. It’s hard not to feel lacking when you had her origin and were suddenly uprooted in another country, in another language, in another social environment.

Yet Esme/My had pride and determination. That’s what I admired most about her.

“No more. She was done. She wasn’t rich, classy, or smart, but she wasn’t something you could use once and toss away. She had value. You couldn’t see it in her clothes she wore of the abbreviations after her name or hear it in the way she spoke, but she felt it, even if she didn’t entirely understand where it came from. It pounded inside her chest, big and strong and bright.

She deserved better than this.”

I can’t explain Esme better than what Helen Hoang wrote in her author’s note:

“Esme was brave, and she was fighting for a new life for herself and her loved ones in every way she could. She had reasons, she had depth, but she also had a striking vulnerability. All of her “drawbacks” were not due to her character. They were things beyond her control: her origin, her education level, her lack of wealth, the language she spoke – things that shouldn’t matter when determining the value of a person.”

As Helen concluded: “It was impossible not to love her.”

Who is your favorite female main character from your 2019 reads?

Thanks for reading!

Sophie