The Roms
Favorite Secondary Character
Nominees:
1. Wren Gao - Red String Theory by Lauren Kung Jessen
Wren is Rooney's (FMC) mother, they have a friction relationship as Wren is a famous artist and garnered a lot of fame from videotaping and showing her giving birth. Rooney is also an artist but tries to keep anonymous to avoid nepotism. Wren has some problem seeing where Rooney is coming from and this leads to growing pains between the two. While it'd be easy to fully side with Rooney, our main character, I found myself wanting to read Wren's story, her strong personality and background had me fascinated with how she became the powerhouse woman she was today.
2. Worldbuilding - Heartless Hunter by Kristen Ciccarelli
I was captured by this world the author created. It's a fantasy world where witches once ruled but a revolution occurred and the Witch Queens were killed. This lead to witches hunted and sent into hiding. Our female main character is a witch and the love interest starts to become a member of the Guard who hunt witches down, leading to a dangerous created world. I liked how the world was thought out and delivered to the reader, it felt real, enhancing the story and characters for me. I also loved that witches get their power from blood and our FMC uses her menses for her source of power.
3. Setting - Kilt Trip by Alexandra Kiley
This takes place in Scotland, so a real place doesn't need the laid out structured time as fantasy but I feel like settings are often underutilized, not so here. We get a feel for the real place with facts, legends, history, and atmosphere from in and around Edinburgh, which also helped to get a feel for and understand our male main character.
4. Miss Beasley - Morning Glory by LaVyrle Spencer
A small-town spinster who greatly, through emotional and actionable deeds, helps our main characters, individually and together, out a lot. She pushed them, educated them, and loved them. I'll always want a novella with her and the lawyer that helps the main couple out and always feel bad at how done dirty she was with the numerous mentions of her facial hair.
5. Joe - Here We Go Again by Alison Cochrun
As I said in my review, you're going to hurt when you read this one, and a big part of that is because of the character Joe. He was the inspirational teacher for the two leads and requests they both take him on a cross-country trip, as he's dying from cancer. On the trip he helps the two make their way back to each other and even gets an emotional closure with a past love of his own. He brought the humor, grief, and helped get our couple together, great secondary character.
6. Suspense Plot - Don't Look Back by Rachel Grant
This was me one point (ok, several points) to my partner as I manically calmly discussed and tried to work through what was going on in this story. It could almost be argued that the suspense plot was the main character but I wanted to talk about it and this is the category it fit in, so, yeah, it was a doozy. I said in my review if you liked the shows The Night Agent, The Old Man, and Bodyguard (British), you definitely want to pick this book up. Family secrets, spy games, conniving Russians, and reveals you see coming and don't. I was locked all the way in.
7. The town - A Novel Love Story by Ashley Poston
Our female main character ends up lost on the road one night and ends up stranded in a town, a town that turns out to be Thee Small Town from her favorite romance series. How cute and magical realism wonderful is this concept?! Her realizing and then geeking out was fun to read and how it lead to delivering the message that happily ever afters are never the end, for better and worse.
8. Claudine - They Dream in Gold by Mai Sennaar
The ride this, seemingly innocuous, secondary character took me on! Claudine is the mother of a female main character but isn't heavily in her adult life after giving her up to her grandmother as a kid. Reader's, mostly, get a look at Claudine through her daughter's eyes, a lens heavily clouded but informative, with some understanding and love. It's when we get Claudine's point-of-view that I felt myself sitting up. She's flawed, lost, and floundering but comes to a point where she starts to build back up. There was an ending scene with her that had me tearing up, which felt out of nowhere, until you think back to how the character had been laid out and built up to get to this point.
9. Gordon - Ain't She Sweet by Susan Elizabeth Phillips
That's right, the dog. Just reminding people who's award show this is. This character was sly, mischievous, humorous, and loving and he said a whole lot without saying a word (in English, anyway). I found myself wanting a Gordon pov.
10. Atmosphere - The House at Watch Hill by Karen Marie Moning
If you enjoy Gothics and want a modern one, this was positively dripping in spooky old house flair. There was alluding paranormal/supernatural elements, lies, deceit, danger, and a is he/isn't he a killer mysterious man, swirling all around our female lead character. It's very much a prelude book but read this during the months of late August and December 1st to drown yourself in delicious Fall, spooky season vibes.
Winner:
Claudine
I read this in July and after I finished it, I was 99.99% sure Claudine was going to take the win here. I wanted to go back and reread this just for Claudine's parts! Normally, I'd say I want her to get her own book but her life story is filtered through here enough that I think her story got told, probably another reason she so clearly takes this win. I just, that gentle, tense, egg shell scene where it finally seems like she's on the road to getting it right, read so loud triumphant in it's quietness to me. I completely understand writing people off from your life, but I sure love reading, hearing about when they make good.
Who or what stole the spotlight for you in 2024?
Next time, Favorite Scene....
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