Hi friends,

Top 5 Tuesday is back! Long hosted by Shanah @bionicbookworm (she was the creator), she has now new challenges awaiting her and Meeghan from @meeghanreadshas become our new mastermind!!!

This week’s topic:

FAVOURITE CHARACTERS  whose names start with letters of the alphabet!! You can do first name, last name, nicknames, whatever you want – that’s completely up to you!!

1 September: A – E

When Meeghan asks to choose ONE favorite per letter, this was my reaction

Honestly, I’ve always been very bad at choosing only one book/character/author/genre etc. And why choose only one right? The more the merrier!

So maybe for some letters you’ll get only one choice (I DID TRY to behave) but sometime, I want to feature several favorites.

A is for .. Alex Stern from Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo

What I love about Alex is that she is extremely strong! She went through hell and lived to tell the tale (well, she does not speak about it but …you get it).

Alex Stern comes in all shades of grey. Because she’s had no luck in life and had to survive. When you learn to survive you quickly realize that good intentions and principles will only lead you so far when you are under extreme duress. Sometimes, you need to stop being the good guy and have to toughen up, just roughing people up a little if you want to get things done like solving a murder case!

Alex’s direct and unorthodox method where a huge contrast to the “hush hush” rules of the houses and the polite civility of Lethe house!

And that was gleeful to see “white trash” Alex trying to fit in the new mold because yes, she got a chance at a new life and wanted to walk the line until her true nature came back full force because when you are chased by ghosts, try to solve a murder case, lost your mentor to another dimension and witness girls being abused you resort to what you know works best: intimidation, roughness and barter in favors!

“You’re a flat beast. Got a little viper lurking in there, ready to strike. A rattler probably.”

The contrast between commoner Alex and her mentor, the polished handsome white knight Darlington was utterly delightful!

And she refuses to stay silent and abandon a case when a poor girl has been murdered if het guts tell her there is something more.

That’s what I admire about her: her determination. Her loyalty to her friends and fierce protectiveness were also something to praise!

B is for ….

Bailey from Making Faces by Amy Harmon

Bailey may be disabled but he was a special person because of his love and courage, “Because life has sculpted him in something amazing”. As Ambrose said “Bailey thaught those he loved to love, put things in perspective, to live for the present, to say I love you often and mean it”. And this is a big lesson, so true but often forgotten except when ordeals knock at our door.

He is my Super Hero! He is so alive, self mocking, determined to fight and beat the odds. Never self centered, never complaining despite his sickness. He is a force to be reckoned with.

Bryce from House of Earth and Blood by Sarah J Maas

Bryce is someone who has been mocked and overlooked by every supernatural being in this world except for her badass shifter friend Danika. The casts ideas and disdain of super natural beings for humans or half humans is going strong in that book and is a major theme: how the high and mighty angels oppress the other side of the planet.

But she grew a tough skin and is showing her middle finger at every supernatural mocking her or trying to bully her.

Even the archangel Mica or the Autumn Fae king and his heir are not spared.

Without any notable power, Bryce has her pride and will be mocked by no one! She also knows how to fight and fire a gun!
 

No surprise when she was paired with the Umbra Mortis, feared assassin of the Governor,  Hunt Athalar that she mocked the authority of the male. She made very clear that she was not afraid by Hunt and would not bow nor cower.

It was gleeful to see Bryce play the vapid party girl, prioritizing her appointment at the nail salon over their mission.

Or so it seemed.

Because all along Bryce kept surprising me! By her loyalty. By her kindness and selflessness. By her protectiveness. By her intelligence. By her dedication. She had a wolf’s heart!

I loved that she had no super power yet still faced monsters and dangers head first! It reminded me of Kestrel in The Winner’s Curse who was no gifted warrior but has a mind so sharp it was her best weapon!

And I had a wicked smile plastered on my face when I saw how she made Athalar run after her and not the opposite! The male was lost. And he soon lost the stick he had in his behind LOL. Bryce sarcasm and banter was priceless! And that left the male stunned so many time! 😊

“An alpha-what?”

“Alphahole. Possessive and aggressive.” She waved a hand at his bare torso. “You know – you males who rip your shirt off at the slightest provocation, who know how to kill people in twenty different ways, who have females falling over themselves to be with you; and when you finally bang one, you go full-on mating-frenzy with her, refusing to let another male look at or talk to her; deciding what and when she needs to eat, what she should wear, when she sees her friends –“

“What the f@ck are you talking about?”

“Your favorite hobbies are brooding, fighting and roaring; you’ve perfected about thirty different type of snarls and growls; you’ve got a cabal of hot friends, and the moment one of you mates, the others fall like dominoes, too, and gods help when you all start having babies –“

C is for ..

Chauncey from The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune

Chancey is a “blob”, a kind of magical being looking a little like a jellyfish. He has been told when he was a kid that he was a monster. But he does not want to frighten others. He is good to his core.

And so, Chauncey dreams of becoming a bellhop.

“Why do you wish to become a bellhop?”

Chauncey grinned. “Because they get to help people.”

“And that’s what you want to do?”

His smile faded lightly. “More than anything. I know I am …” “Different”

“Just because I look the way I do doesn’t mean I can’t help people. I know some people think I am scary but I promise I am really not.”

Cordelia Carstairs from Chain of Gold by Cassandra Clare

She reminded me of Emma Carstairs but without the recklessness and impulsivity.

Cordelia is smart and courageous!

They moved to London with her mother and her brother Alastair to plead her father’s cause as he is detained in prison in Idris after a catastrophic event.

Her mother would love for her to find a good suitor to protect Cordelia and reinstate the Carstair’s name. But Cordelia is proud and has witt!

“She would solve this with cleverness and bravery – not with the sale of herself as a bride “

I really loved how she did not bow nor let circumstances abate her. She always was determined to stand on her own two feet and be respected. She was so resilient!

At one point, there is a scene where I could have shaken James as he left Cordelia in a tight spot. Did she cry? Oh no!

 “You look ill, Matthew observed. “Is it my dancing? Is it me personally?”
Cordelia drew herself up. She was Corselia Carstairs, daughter of Elias and Sona, one of a long line of Shadowhunters. She was the inheritor of the famous sword Cortana, which had been passed down the Carstairs family for generations. She was in London to save her father. She would not fall apart in public.

See what I mean? She has a backbone of steel yet she is loyal to a fault and so selfless! She would go through fire to save her friends and family.

She is not reckless but she is fearless.

“They need a muse,” said Anna. “Someone to be inspired by. Someone to know their secrets. Would you like to be a muse?”

“No,” said Cordelia. “I would like to be a hero.”

Cilka from Cilka’s Journey by Heather Morris

I can’t fathom how Cilka survived that hell. How she managed to survive not only Auschwitz but also Siberian camps where she will be defiled by men yet again.

Where did her enormous strength come from????

“To have lost everything. To have had to endure what she has endured, and be punished for it. How can she go on? How can she work for a new enemy? Live to see the women around her tire, starve, diminish, die. But she – she WILL live. She does not know why she has always been sure of that, why she feels he can persist but she can.

It is fire then that keeps her going. But it is also a curse. It makes her stand out, be singled out. She must contain it, control it, direct it.

To survive.”

I read about Cilka’s days in Birkenhau thanks to flashbacks. Most of this story is set in Siberia but I learned more about what she had to do to survive the Nazis. I learned about the enormous guilt that she carried. Guilt as she had survived while so many others had not.

Her “curse” as she felt that everyone close to her just died. That she carried death.

“I am cursed. Everyone around me dies or is taken away. It is not safe to be near me.”

And to know that this character really existed…

D is for Diana Bishop from A Discover of Witches

Diana has been orphaned very young and has spent all the years following her parent’s death to refute her “heritage”. She is convinced that magic is what killed her parents, both powerful witches, and she is determined not to use witchcraft and just live as a normal human.

She is an historian, a scholar living in Oxford and doing research on alchemy when she’ll cross path with Matthew.

From that moment on, all will go awry for Diana and she will feel compelled by the vampire and drawn to her witch side.

Diana is oen of the most powerful witches I have read about and her story was absolutely fascinating!

E is for Elizabeth Scrivener from Sorcery of Thorns by Margaret Rogerson

I loved when Elisabeth Scrivener, orphaned abandoned at the entrance of a Great Library and raised among very alive grimoires was retelling that the first time she had seen a normal book she thought he was dead because he made no noise nor movement! So delicious!!!

What also added humor and comic moments was the knack of Elisabeth to always jump head first into compromising situations! Like making fall an entire book shelf on the sorcerer she covertly and discreetly tried to spy on just to end falling on him and grabbing his surprisingly soft hair to test a theory and make sure he had or had not pointed ears! It’s for science you see…

I also loved to see her character growth.

How Elisabeth, raised in a Great Library and sworn to protect grimoires, not to ever dabble in magic because sorcerers are evil came to realize through that story that not everything is clear cut. That all sorcerers are not evil, that not all magic is bad nor all demons are enemies. That maybe her purpose lies in something other than making sure that grimoires are trapped and well guarded.

Here are my favorites! Do we have any in common?

Thanks for reading!

Sophie