Friday Reads: Complex Characters

This week I read Victoria Dahl’s Bad Boys Do and Jill Shalvis’ Simply Irresistible. (Reviews for both are on Goodreads).

I enjoyed both books, but I really loved Bad Boys Do because both hero and heroine, but especially hero, were really complex characters. Not the kind of complex where you roll your eyes and think the author is just piling it on. No, both Jamie and Olivia felt totally real. I’d say they were some of the best drawn characters I’ve read in romance, because they had depth, because they weren’t perfect or evil or anything. They just felt… real. 

As a writer, I was just really impressed by Dahl’s ability to not just create these characters, but also to bring them to life to the reader. For me, it’s easy to create characters. It’s easy for them to be great in my head, but sometimes that doesn’t translate to the person reading it (which is why an awesome CP is so valuable).

This was by far my best read of the summer, and even though I didn’t love the first book in the series, I’ve preordered the last hoping it brings some of the same magic.