Valentine's Week Guest Post: Bad Boys With A Good Heart

When it comes to book crushes, I’m definitely more of a hero girl. I mean, come on! How can any self-respecting girl not love Peeta? Or Po? Or Jem? Or Sam? Yeah… *wistful sighs* I love them…
But every once in a while, a bad boy will come around and sweep me right off my feet.

Not just any bad boy, though. He has to have a good heart. One that is not buried too deep… *cough* Will *cough* (Although, I totally trust that his good heart will eventually show. Eventually.)

I started thinking about bad boys that I love, though, and came up with a very short list, so I turned to my friends on Twitter for help…

The most common bad boy (with three votes) was Patch from Hush, Hush. I’ve yet to read this one, so I’m going off what I’ve heard. Bad boy? Yes. Good heart? Not so sure…

Some of the other ones were Gerard Tarrant from the Coldfire Trilogy (Had to google him, but I am so reading this!), Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights (old school, but yes!), and the “bad faerie dude from Paranormalcy” (I suppose I could look up his name for you, but I like what Wendy said).

My friend Kristina  replied that her favorite bad boys are her two sons. She’s joking. Really. She is. Well, I think she is… At least they’re cute bad boys with good hearts!

This leads me to my two favorite bad boys:

Cole from Linger by Maggie Stiefvater

When I first opened Linger and saw Cole’s name in the chapter heading, I closed the book. Seriously. I wanted Grace and Sam. I mean, really, Sam is just amazing! Why doesn’t he just have his own book! So when I saw Cole’s name, I refused the read the book. I couldn’t bear to open it again. Cole already had one strike against him simply by being in the book. I didn’t want the intrusion. I was right. When I finally decided to give it a try, I hated Cole. With a passion. He was a bad boy, and try as I might, I could not see a good heart.

This is one of the things I adore about Maggie’s writing, however: her characters are so rich and complex. By the end of the book, Cole had me eating out of his hands. Of course, it didn’t hurt that he did, in fact, finally show his good heart. There is a certain scene in the end of Linger that made me cry and solidified the fact that Cole does indeed have good heart (making me love him just as much as Sam). Now, I can’t wait to read Forever to find out where the bad boy thing came from. I mean, we have some clues, but… ;o)


And my all-time favorite Bad Boy with a Good Heart…

Jace from Cassandra Clare’s Mortal Instruments

*sighs* Jace.

From the first time I saw the snarky golden boy take out a demon in Pandemonium, I was hooked. I mean sure, he wasn’t always the nicest person to Clary, but what do you expect from a boy who was taught at an extremely young age that “To love is to destroy” *heart breaks a little*? And he loved Clary. And he didn’t want to destroy her. And… And… Oh, there is so much more!

His childhood, his relationship with his father, was so complex. How could his character not be? But through it all, his love for Clary is right there.

And the boy really does have a good heart. You can see it seep out whenever his family and friends need him. You can see it in his fierce protectiveness over them.

You can see it in City of Ashes in a certain scene on a certain boat with a certain character who also loves Clary. If there was ever any doubt as to his good heart, what he did in that room, what he said to that character, is more than enough proof.

Yes. Jace is a bad boy… But at least he has a good heart! :o)

(I want to give a shout out to by #FoobaConJace girls… Fellow Jace (and bacon) lovers Di [www.twitter.com/dianapaz_], Tina [www.twitter.com/tinalynn_], and Erica [www.twitter.com/ericamchapman]. Yes. We share Jace. And bacon.)


So who are your favorite bad boys? Do they have good hearts?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Janelle Alexander loves to read and write, especially YA. And she loves to crush on fictional characters. And she is as jealous of all of you in your fabulously cold snow as you are of her in her stupid, hot sun. You can find her on Twitter (@janellealexandr), her personal blog (janellealexander.blogspot.com), or her group blog (DNAwriters.blogspot.com).

Valentine's Week Guest Post: Hot Boys With Accents

‘Ello, Sexy.

The first time I fell in love I was in Orlando, Florida. He had dropped something while walking out of a restaurant, and being the good Southern girl that I am, I picked it up and handed it back to him. He gave me a brilliant smile and replied, “Cheers, Love.”

That was it. I was smitten. Sure, he was an over-weight, bald man old enough to be my father, but that accent. Being from the backwoods of Kentucky, it was my first real life exposure to a British accent, and it was the most beautiful sound in the whole world to my ears.

To this day, I’m still entranced by a good accent. A guy can go from fairly average to steaming hot in two seconds flat with the addition of an Irish brogue. Even in books, I’m drawn to characters with accents I can only hear in my head. In honor of Valentine’s Day, I’ve put together a list of my five favorite boys with accents in YA literature.

Carlos Fuentes from Simone Elkeles’ Rules of Attraction. I liked Alex, really I did, but it was his brother Carlos who stole my heart. There was no way Kira could have resisted when the Mexican bad boy said, “I dare you.”

Étienne St. Claire from Stephanie Perkins’ Anna and the French Kiss. What could be more perfect than a boy with a French name and British accent? After reading Anna and the French Kiss, I’m pretty sure the answer to that question is “not a single thing.”

George Weasley from the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling. Yes, there are tons of guys with accents to choose from in the Harry Potter series (like Professor Snape who can read the phone book to me any day of the week), but the Weasley twins win my affection. How can you not love the fun-loving gingers? Well, I suppose I mean the fun-loving ginger… We miss you, Fred.

Jem Carstairs from Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare. I like Jem. He’s smart and sensitive and plays the violin. How cool is that? Okay, so the whole Bleached Boy thing creeps me out a little. (I know a woman who is silver because of her “medicine”. Trust me on this, it’s not pretty.) But looks aren’t everything, right? Especially when you’re a half-British, half-Chinese Shadowhunter who grew up in Shanghai and now lives in England. What I wouldn’t give to hear him speak.

Image from Just One More Freak Deviant Art

Will Herondale from Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare. You thought I was going full-on Team Jem there didn’t you? Don’t be so naïve. I couldn’t choose just one Shadowhunter even if I was being held at claw-point by a demon. Will isn’t just beautiful and British, but also tortured. And if there is anything I love more than a boy with an accent, it’s a boy with angst.

How about you? What are your favorite fictional boys with accents? And what accents are certain to make a guy’s hotness level raise a few points in your book?

Miss Tammy is the Young Adult Services Coordinator for a public library system in Kentucky. When she's not reading, writing, or cataloging books, she's sleeping. Being from Kentucky she has no accent whatsoever. 

Valentine's Week Guest Post: All About Heroes

When Aly asked me to write this post, I agreed immediately. Who doesn’t love a hero? And then I started to think about it and I realized it was harder than I thought. I mean, there are so many different types of heroes. So, I ran to the dictionary and found it equally unhelpful. I already knew the description: myth, legend, strong, brave, idol. I just couldn’t put my finger on it until I realized that that’s not what I wanted to talk about here. I wanted to talk about a specific type of hero. You know, the one we read about; that guy we’ve all met between the pages of our favorite stories – the one who always does the right thing.

Let’s face it, he may not even start out as a hero. Oscar in Pam Bachorz’ CANDOR is really more of an anti-hero in the beginning of the story. But then some thing or better yet, someone, changes his way of thinking and he ends up sacrificing everything for her. How can you not love that guy?

He may be someone we already know like Simon in Cassie Clare’s The Mortal Instruments. Who didn’t love him when he waited for Clary in her bedroom while she was observing the flowering patterns of obscure flora with a certain Shadowhunter? Okay, Simon interrupts what is going to be one hot scene but he was there for Clary, making sure she was safe in this strange, new world they just discovered.

Or maybe he’s the boy next door as in A.M. Robinson’s Vampire Crush. After all, who doesn’t love a boy who remembers where he hid that princess sandal he stole from you when you were kids?

I have to mention a Hot Boy with Sword who fits this bill nicely – Ash from Julie Kagawa’s Iron Fey books. And if you haven’t read The Iron Queen, yet, I won’t spoil it for you but just read those last few pages and you’ll see what I mean. Ash always does the right thing. Always.

My favorite in this genre has got to be Cabel from Lisa McMann’s WAKE/FADE/GONE series. He and Janie have been through so much and still, in GONE, he waits for her. He even keeps his inner worries hidden (or so he thinks). But through it all, he remains by her side, always but always doing the right thing.

So next time you pick up a book, look for that boy, you know the one…yeah, see him off in the distance watching you, waiting to help you out when you need him the most.

Sophie Riggsby is a busy mom of three you can find her daydreaming about fictional characters while waiting for her children in the School Pick Up Lane, at Boy Scout meetings or in their ballet classes. She loves to post book reviews on Mundie Moms, Mundie Kids and Page Turners Blog.