***The Starry-Eyed Revue***: character-driven novels

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by the awesome ladies at The Broke and the Bookish. Apparently, they are overly fond of list-making and love to share their bookish lists with the rest of us book nerds. =) We're game.

This week's topic is the Top Ten Books For Readers Who Like Character-Driven Novels.

April's Picks:

I may be interpreting this topic all wrong, but I'm basing it on my love of the characters from these books. Maybe it's cheating to add Vampire Academy and Bloodlines, but the thing is.. Vampire Academy, I was so in love with all of those characters. Rose and Dimitri especially, so when I picked up Bloodlines, I wasn't expecting to fall in love all over again, but I did, and the characters are what bring me back to these stories over and over.

To mix it up a little, I added Bella Andre's The Look of Love. It's adult romance, and the first of a series that follows the Sullivan family while they fall in love. As the books go on, you get to see how previous characters are doing and I love that. I became highly addicted and read them all straight through.

Since you've been gone, I loved those characters hard.. and Morgan Matson just has this way of making you connect with them all, not just this one, but the other books she's written. And last of all, The Iron Fey books. While the world building is freaking amazing, it's the characters that add icing to the cake. At least for me. :)

Jen's Picks:

For me, a character-driven story is one where there's some action, but the plot is slower-paced, moved forward by characters and their interactions rather than through intense actions scenes. The characters engage each other a lot -- and there are usually lots of characters -- and it's all leading up to one big thing toward the end of the novel. I actually prefer character-driven novels most of the time, and these listed below are some of my favorites. Also, I couldn't help myself...even though April only did five, I couldn't not feature all of those books from one of my most favorite authors, especially since she seems to specialize in character-driven novels.