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!!

Letters from K to O

K is for 

Kya from Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

That small gitl broke my heart but she was a true survivor. There was such beauty and feelings in this story!

“Sometimes she heard night-sounds she didn’t know or jumped from lightning too close, but whenever she stumbled, it was the land who caught her. Until at last, at some unclaimed moment, the heart-pain seeped away like water into sand. Still there, but deep. Kya laid her hand upon the breathing, wet earth, and the marsh became her mother.”
― Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing

Kestrel from The Winner’s Curse by Marie Rutkoski

Lady Kestrel is a remarkable young woman, with an acute mind, a big heart, a strategist extraodinaire and trapped in a maze of conspiracy. The palace is her golden cage and she is constantly spied upon. Ridden by guilt when forced to make a choice: sacrifice “a few” or destroy everyone, she truly is caught between a rock and a hard place.

“Her fierce creature of a mind: sleek and sharp-clawed and utterly unwilling to be caught.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Winner’s Crime

L is for 

Linus from The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune

He is rotund, living all alone, following the rules to a fault. He does not look like much, rather a little grey mouse, a little silent, yet you see that he takes his job at heart.

He works for the DICOMY:  Department in Charge of Magical Youth. His task is visiting special orphanages filled with magical children. He has to know if they abide by the rules and … if the children are safe and well cared for. That last part is Linus’s special touch as you can feel his love for these kids radiating from the page, even if “forming attachment” with these kids is highly discouraged in the Rules and Regulations employee’s handbook!

You can feel that Linus is lonely, living a discreet and quite boring life with his cat Calliope.

If there was ever a cinnamon roll character, it’s Linus! He has such a big heart.

“It’s just me,” Linus said, unsure of where this was going. “I don’t know how to be anyone but who I already am. This is how I’ve always been. It’s not much, but I do the best I can with what I have.”

M is for ….

Moti from Moti on the Water by Leylah Attar

Moti (pronounce with a soft T like “th”) is a young Indian woman.

She lives with her mother Dolly as her father left her when she was two years old.

Moti works for Joseph Uncle and at the beginning of the story she is at a dinner rehearsal for her cousin Isabel’s wedding. The only problem is that Moti is prone to accident or rather “incident” and it will have her fired as the maid of honor.

Pause: that scene with Moti choking on her food and then falling backward, below the dais being stuck with her legs at an angle impossible for her to stand up discreetly already had me laughing so hard that I nearly peed my pants. And that was only the beginning.

Moti was such a breath of fresh hair!

“If you looked at a family closely enough, you’d see that everyone had a job. There were Bosser-Arounders and Bossed-Arounders. War Makers and Bread Bakers. Promise Keepers and Promise Breakers. When you did something enough times, you got a label so everyone else knew what to expect.”

“Labels made life easier for everyone. I was all about labels and mine read ‘Mother Minder’, meaning I had to mind my mother, Dolly, at family get-togethers. You see, Dolly liked to play dead. Usually at the most inopportune times.”

Morgan in Birthday by Meredith Russo

Morgan had to find who he was and when he did he could not show it to anyone. He had to live for years, suffocating. Either trying to live as a girl just to hide it again; either embracing his masculinity, wearing it like a mask until everything shattered inside.

Add to his/her suffering the yearly letters left by his deceased mother and to be read at every birthday and I was a sobbing mess most of the time!

Needless to say that Morgan stole my heart and soul!

“I wonder if maybe I just can’t cry anymore, if maybe growing up means testosterone is running through my body like an invading army, butchering and bunting everything tender.”
― Meredith Russo, Birthday

N is for …

Nina Zenik from Six of Crows and King of Scars by Leigh Bardugo

Nina. I love her humor. The way she is flirting. Her smart. Her selflessness. Her courage. Her dedication.

I love Nina’s humor and her banter with proud and proper Matthias was simply delicious! I loved witnessing the proud Fjerdan being all flustered by Nina!

“I am grateful you’re alive”, he said. “I am grateful that you’re beside me. I am grateful that you’re eating.”
She rested her head on his shoulder.
“You’re better that waffles, Matthias Helvar.”
A small smile curled the Fjerdan’s lips.
“Let’s not say things we don’t mean, my love.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Crooked Kingdom

Nahri from The Daevabad series by SA Chakraborty

Nahri has lived alone on the streets for a very long times as she has no memories of her parents. She fled orphanages when she was a small kid as she has special abilities like feeling the illnesses and curing them. Not the best way to be accepted as normal among the other kids and care takers.

To survive Nahri has been forced to become a con artist.

But one day she will summon a “being”, a Daeva named Dara.

I loved Nahri! She is not flawless, she is determined, stubborn and a survivor. Street smart she will adapt the best she can. She also has a warm personality and her heart will soon beat for a warrior who is far from an angel.

“You’re some kind of thief, then?”
“That a very narrow-minded way of looking at it. I prefer to think of myself as a merchant of delicate tasks.”
― S.A. Chakraborty, The City of Brass

O is for …

Ox in Wolfsong by TJ Klune

If love could have a name it would be Ox.

Ox so big, too slow always feeling inadequate, not enough but holding everyone together because he simply was Ox. He was different. He was more.
Always helping and caring and putting others before him. And he broke my heart at least a hundred times.

He took care of his mom. He was barely a teen when his dad left and he promised her he would always protect her. This scene was the second of the many cracks in my heart… “She touched my face. Her hands smelled like salt and french fries and coffee. Her thumbs brushed against my wet cheeks. “What happened?” I looked down at her, because she’d always been small and at some point in the last year or so, I’d grown right past her. I wished I could remember the day it happened. It seemed monumental. “I’ll take care of you,” I promised her. “You don’t ever need to worry.”
He was desperate, bills piling up and went to the auto shop his dad worked for before leaving. He asked the boss Gordo to give him a job because: 

”I’d do good, Gordo. I would do good work and I’d work for you forever. It was going to happen anyway and can we just do it now? Can we just do it now? I’m sorry. I just need to do it now because I have to be the man now.” My throat hurt. “

And when years later he got his gift from Gordo on his sixteen’s birthday with his name embroidered: 

” Ox, the work shirt read. Like I mattered. Like I meant something. Like I was important. Men don’t cry. My daddy taught me that. Men don’t cry because they don’t have time to cry.”

 I was looking like a panda on the train, all mascara running on my cheeks…

I will stop for today! Have you read about these characters?

Thanks for reading.

Sophie