Identifying with heroines

Well, I must say that Three to Get Deadly, the third Stephanie Plum novel by Janet Evanovich, is really doing the trick for an escapist comfort read. I am just a sucker for that world. Mom has been making pot roast. Faithful Rex the hamster is always running in his little wheel. Last night Joe Morelli even brought over a pizza from Pino’s. He was there when I ordered it, and decided to surprise me.

Don’t worry, I know that I’m not Stephanie, but I have to say that my experience of identification with Stephanie is scarily complete when I’m reading one of these books, and I’ve been thinking, what’s that all about? A lot of it is obviously about her vulnerability - she's not that great a bounty hunter, and she's even scared a lot, and checks her closets when she gets home.

Of course I’ve read heroines who are so vulnerable and needy that I want to slap them. You have to have something on the plus side, too. For Stephanie’s it’s her resourcefulness, and the fact that she never gives up. Plus, she has this intense desire to be a good bounty hunter.

I don’t have to identify with a hero or heroine to love them or love a book, but when I want a comfort read, I do. So what the hell, I have decided to make a list.

Heroines I have the highest and most gratifying identification experience with during reading:

1. Stephanie Plum.
2. Harper from the Grave Surprise series. Sorry, I have a kitty on my lap, so I won't be getting up to see what the official name of the series is, but it's the other one by Charlaine Harris. I sure love this heroine. Every town she goes to, everybody thinks she’s a freak because they’re sort of scared of her, and because she makes them uncomfortable. Then she ends up helping them, because she believes in what she’s doing. And the assholes end up feeling or at least looking like real assholes. It’s an unusually satisfying series in this way. She is so easy to identify with, though.
3. Georgina from Succubus Blues. I haven’t read the new one, so maybe she gets downgraded or upgraded in relate-ability, but she has a tragic vulnerability in the first book in that she will destroy any man she loves, but she wants to love! Her wanting something badly and never getting it, and the internal struggle of that somehow makes her really easy to identify with.
4. No, this isn't a book, but how could I not put Buffy on this list?

Tomorrow: Heroines who I admire and/or am of in awe or fascinated by, but don’t fully identify with.

Merry Christmas Succubus!

An early Christmas present I will be buying for myself: Succubus On Top by Richelle Mead (release date-December 18th). Mead wrote one of my top five favorite reads of 2007: Succubus Blues. The 'blues' in the title refers to the central torment of the main character, Georgina: because she's a succubus, she'll suck out the life energy of any guy she's with. So she can't be with guys she likes. Well, not without destroying them, and who wants to do that?

One thing Mead does really well is to draw a complex character with an interesting moral makeup. That is to say, Georgina is sort of an ethical bad girl, which I loved. I mean, she'll have sex with her sleezy boss because she doesn't care about sucking his life energy, but she steers clear of the men she desperately desires, and in general, tries to be a not-too-evil succubus. Not easy!! And there is her backstory, full of self sacrifice. But she never feels all sorry for herself. The title is really wrong in this sense.

I also loved that Georgina works at a bookstore and is an avid reader and a fangirl of author Seth Morgenstern (I went with Jim Butcher there) and loves him for his mind, sort of (oh! what will become of their budding romance?) but the thing is, it made her feel like somebody I'd know and like. It made her feel like the kind of people I already know and like. In fact, of all the characters in all the books I've read recently, she's the one I'd most want to be friends with.

I think Mead made a very tricky juggling act look deceptively easy here, especially vis a vis what the men around her make of her mysterious ways. The dialogue rocks, too. I could go on. But I think I'm going to go preorder Succubus on Top.