​Book Girlfriends and the Men and Women Who Love them

Everybody always talks about book boyfriends, those hot alpha males we all love to read about.  But not a lot is said about book girlfriends, those women who you’d love to have next to you in a fight, or as your BFF.  Here are my top BBFF (book, best friends, forever)

• Kate Daniels – kickass sword swinger and magic user.
• Lt. Eve Dallas – tough police lieutenant with mad investigation skills and work ethic.
• Amaranthe Lokdon – charismatic leader with a penchant for getting in trouble and blowing things up.
• Lady Surreal SaDiablo – assassin, former courtesan, grey jeweled witch.
• Gunnery Sergeant Torin Kerr – Space Marine, ‘nuff said.

A lot of the times, these types of book girlfriends don’t appear in the regular genre romance books.  The above examples have romantic elements in their plots but their books are urban fantasy, science fiction, and fantasy.  I’m not saying that romances don’t have awesome, powerful women.  Just take Jessica Trent in Loretta Chase’s Lord of Scoundrels, for example.  You had to have some chops to stand up to Dain, the bane and blight of the Ballisters.  I find that romance heroines tend to be more emotionally strong than the urban fantasy heroines who are usually both emotionally and physically strong.  A lot of the times, it’s the romance genre that holds that back.  You really can’t have a regency heroine who’s a boxer.  They do all their fighting in pretty dresses and in sitting rooms, like Lillian in Lisa Kleypas’ It Happened one Autumn. Sparks fly when feisty American meets snooty English aristocrat.  She gives him hell.  It’s great to watch them fall in love.
In contemporary romance, the strong female usually has self confidence and a great sense of humor.  Take Jenny Crusie’s Min, for instance in Bet Me.  Cal has no idea what hit him. Of course, Suzanne Brockman’s PJ Richards in Harvard’s Education is a sharp shooter, training with SEALS.  I’m not messing with her.  My personal favorite contemporary heroine has a great job like a lawyer or a business owner, who doesn’t take one bit of the heroes’ nonsense. Julie James’ heroines tend to be wise cracking professional women with a low tolerance for B.S.
Carolyn, my heroine in The Queen’s Wings, isn’t kickass.  She’s never been in a fight, unless you count her brother Evan, but he deserved it.  He bent the cover of her signed copy of Jude Deveraux’s Knight in Shining Armor.  She’s just a regular girl who dreams of becoming a dragon.  Yet along the way, she finds a way to be strong, both emotionally and physically.