CONVERSATION: What Makes Hero Descriptions Work or Not Work for You?
Layla: I’m starting off this conversation about hero descriptions with one anecdote and two questions. The anecdote is about a book I recently picked up, Erin Satie’s Book of Love. Jennie did a fabulous review of it. I usually love Erin Satie’s books, but there was a description of the hero that just stopped me in my tracks. I could not continue reading the book! I started it and had a very visceral reaction which I have never had towards a hero— disgust. Even the opening description of what he looks like was gross or off-putting to me:
Biscuit colored from head to toe, with skin the color of fresh dough and hair the color of warm golden-brown of bread crust baked to perfection, all capped off by a blinding smile. Very white teeth.
What the……. comparing his skin color to dough did not come across as sexy or handsome and biscuit colored— I had no idea how to picture that!! He did not seem attractive at all. In her other books Satie’s heroes are not all conventionally attractive or perfect–I remember one, a boxer, is short and kind of beaten up, another Alfred (I think is his name?) is handsome but has crooked teeth. I still thought both were attractive from the descriptions. This hero, not so much.
Others in the comments pointed out that this could be an alluring description of a hero, but it just didn’t work for me.
So my two questions for the group:
What are some memorable descriptions of heroes that communicated their attractiveness?
What are some descriptions of heroes that were puzzling or put you off?
Janine: I haven’t read the Satie but that *is* a weird description. It doesn’t make me salivate over the hero but it does make me hungry for a just-out-of-the-oven braided loaf of challah bread, LOL. And brings to mind other baked goods adjectives that have been applied to men in romances, like “stud muffin” or “cinnamon roll hero.” These are not selling points for me. I don’t want to picture the Pillsbury doughboy or a plate of Danishes when I think about romance heroes.
Layla: You make me laugh so hard with your comment about challah bread. I tend to dislike any description comparing anyone–hero or heroine–to food. Just not sexy! And that description in the Erin Satie made me think of Pillsbury doughboy. There’s a way an author can use words to describe a hero who is not conventionally attractive–even Satie herself did it better with her book with a boxer hero (he is short, kind of squat, not terribly handsome, but still attractive because he is loyal, smart, powerful, protective, etc.)
Jayne: I will admit to not being a fan of comparing any characters to food.
Janine: POC are often offended by descriptions of POC characters that compare them to food, such as “skin the color of café au lait.” I’m 100% on board with those feelings. As a Jewish person I haven’t encountered that applied to Jewish characters but I sure have seen Jewish characters described as “swarthy” or “sallow” (and often to indicate villainy or unattractiveness). Anytime I see one of those adjectives applied to a POC, Jewish, Mediterranean, or Middle Eastern character I recoil. Lisa Kleypas did this–her Hathaways series has two Rom heroes. In Mine Till Midnight, Amelia’s first sight of Cam is described so:
He was black-haired and swarthy and exotic. And he moved with the swift grace of a cat, easily avoiding the swipes and lunges of his opponents.
In Seduce Me at Sunrise, there’s this:
Win was startled by the powerful expanse of his [Merripen’s] torso, all ribbed muscle and swarthy brawn.
Yuck. And another yuck for “exotic.” I enjoyed the first of these books but I wish she’d refrained.
Layla: I haven’t paid close attention to how POC are described, but everything you write Janine makes me shudder. Swarthy is a horrible descriptor, and lazy to boot.
Jennie: There’s a famous Edith Layton Regency – I think it’s The Duke’s Wager, but I couldn’t swear to it (I read it a LONG time ago), where the hero dresses and arrays himself very much in the style of the time. High heels, foppish clothing, cosmetics, and maybe a face patch? (Again, a looonnng time ago.) I think I had other problems with the book – which IIRC was a favorite of other readers – but beyond those issues, I could not get into the hero’s description. The closest semi-modern comparison would be hair metal bands of the 80s, and while I do like a good hair metal ballad, the musicians were never appealing to me.
Jayne: I don’t like comparing characters to famous people. If an author wants to write descriptions in a way that makes me think of a certain person, okay I’ll accept that but if the only thing the author can say is “He looked so much like Jason Momoa” or (used to be) George Clooney then I say “use your words and quit cheating with a shorthand depiction.”
Jennie: I agree on heroes being compared to celebrities. It always strikes me as cheesy and cringy. Why not describe a hero that looks like Jason Momoa or George Clooney? Like, usually actual adjectives rather than names?
Layla: Yes–I just downloaded a sample of a new Gena Showalter book and it was so awful–not least of which because the two characters in this mythical fictional fantastical universe mention Jason Momoa and Henry Cavill!!
Janine: I’m with you all on movie star comparisons. Not only does get in the way of my image of the hero but it can also get dated in really unfortunate ways. I thought Mel Gibson was gorgeous at one time, but now, knowing his racist views, I’d be horrified to come across a hero described as looking at him. Ditto the young Sean Connery. I used to think he was beautiful, but then I found out about his views on smacking women.
Jayne: That’s a good point about the movie star comparisons getting dated and not always in good ways.
Sirius: I don’t care for the hero describing himself while looking in the mirror. I understand the challenge of describing the person without disturbing the flow of the story but description from the mirror does tend to annoy me.
Layla: I agree, although I have to say, I haven’t encountered that commonly–can you think of books where this happens? I too like when the hero’s description is from the heroine’s perspective. (Third person omniscient works well too).
Sirius: Layla I don’t remember the titles off the top of my mind I will think about it! I actually prefer (and this is simply a personal preference) less description rather than more I like to imagine what the person looks like based on the clues. Say you mention a strong jaw and hair color and then you talk about the person doing sports I already can guess that he is fit and the rest I can see in my mind. I don’t particularly enjoy every single thing being described for me.
Jennie: I don’t have a strong inclination for or against a lot of description, though I find it most organic if it’s coming from the heroine’s observations. There are some descriptions that are so cliche I find them meaningless at this point, like a hero looking like “a pirate.” But I’ll bet there are books out there that I’ve liked that had little physical description but descriptions of personality/character that allowed me to build my own vision of the hero. (That said, I am not a very visual reader.)
Jayne: I agree that less is more in many cases but I do need some kind of description to get a character in my mind. It drives me nuts when authors give you nothing.
Sirius: No, no I don’t mean nothing. I just don’t like overdone :)
Jayne: Oh, I didn’t mean to imply that’s what you meant. I agree with you that hints are better than everyone overdoing it. But I have read some books and novellas in which the author *never* describes the main characters at all.
Janine: For attractive descriptions, I loved the first description of Samuel in Leda’s thoughts in Laura Kinsale’s The Shadow and the Star (he enters the dress shop where she works—it’s the first time she sees him):
The room full of women went uncharacteristically silent as Mr. Gerard appeared in the door…a collective intake of feminine breath at the sight of him—a golden, slightly wind-blown Gabriel come down to earth, minus nothing but the wings.
I am not a fan of the book, but I don’t know if I’ve ever read a description that better captures what it’s like to look at someone so arresting that you’re instantly a little bit in love. There’s something magical about that experience and Kinsale captures that magic.
That comes at just 4% in. But what I love even more is this paragraph at the 85% mark, because it cuts so much deeper:
He stood up. For one instant she allowed herself to look at him, to impress on her memory what was beyond remembering. Once he was gone, it wouldn’t be possible to create an image bright enough, or perfect enough, because when she looked at him she couldn’t seem to see the man Mrs. Richards had called indecently good-looking. She couldn’t see the potent, flawless, angel-Gabriel fascination that caused the ladies at the far table to slide glances over their menus. She knew it was there, before her eyes, but in her heart she only saw Samuel—saw the unhappiness in him, saw that his set expression was a mask.
If the first description captures the experience of falling a little bit in love at first sight, the second shows what is actually true love. Here, the reader realizes how much Leda loves Samuel precisely because she doesn’t see his beauty. She sees him.
Layla: My favorite descriptions of heroes are not so much about what they actually physically look like (although I need details like height and eye color and hair etc) but more about essence. When writers use metaphor well, it makes a character visceral, and come alive.
Two authors who I think do a great job with this are Meredith Duran, and Evie Dunmore (she’s my new fave!). Also, Lisa Kleypas, Laura Kinsale, Mary Balogh, and Loretta Chase (I can’t think of many contemporaries because I don’t read them as much.) But it’s more than just how a person looks— it’s their essence, how they interact with others, how their inner person is revealed to the world (and often to the heroine). I tend to love when the hero is a mystery at first, then his complex inner life is revealed to the heroine later. He goes literally from a stereotype or idea of a person–aristocrat, duke, rake, etc.–to being a fully realized person–Lucien, Tristan, etc. So part of the process of falling in love is discovering what lies beneath the surface–the complexity that makes up a person is partly about how they look, partly how they move in the world, partly how they interact with others, and partly about their history and past.
Janine: “He goes literally from a stereotype or idea of a person–aristocrat, duke, rake, etc.–to being a fully realized person”–yes! I love that too.
Sirius: I just want to say that I absolutely agree that description of the hero that reflects his essence are my favorite ones – passion for the job, desire to help others, etc. etc. if all this described as the story unfolds and not as information dump all the better for me.
Janine: I agree with you both. But that gets us into the bigger area of characterization in general–what you said holds true for me with any character and isn’t specific just to heroes. There’s so much to be said about that we should probably save it for a different conversation.
What about you, readers? What are the factors that make hero descriptions successful or unsuccessful for you? And do you have other thoughts (or specific examples) on this topic that you’d like to share?
Hmm, my comment seems to have disappeared. Trying again.
I have aphantasia so don’t visualize when I read, thus I don’t see characters the way other readers might. The biscuit description didn’t bother me, @Layla. I believe I’ve seen the word used as a color description for breeches of that era so took it to mean the hero was rather monochromatic save for his hair.
@Jennie, your mention of the fop reminded me of the hero in Heartless, one of Mary Balogh’s few Georgian romances. Lucas Kendrick is introduced in a scene with his uncle.
“… his uncle merely laughed and looked him over from head to toe with leisurely appreciation. His amused eyes took in the powdered hair neatly set into two rolls on either side of the head, the long hair caught behind into a black silk bag and tied in a large bow at the nape of his neck—it was his own hair, not a wig—the austerely handsome face with its dusting of powder and blush of rouge and one black patch; the dark-blue silk coat with its full skirts and silver lining and lavish silver embroidery; the tight gray knee breeches and white silk stockings; the silver-buckled shoes with their high red heels. The Duke of Harndon was the very epitome of Parisian splendor. And then, of course, there was the dress sword at his side with its sapphire-jeweled hilt, a weapon with which his grace was said to be more than ordinarily adept.”
The AAR review of Crusie’s Welcome to Temptation quotes this description, which is really good:
[Phin] “looked like every glossy frat boy in every nerd movie ever made, like every popular town boy who’d ever looked right through her in high school, like every rotten rich kid who’d ever belonged where she hadn’t.”
Full review here: https://allaboutromance.com/book-review/welcome-to-temptation-jennifer-crusie/
I recently re-read Kleypas’s Dreaming of You, and while there’s never any mention of Derek Craven’s ethnicity – he doesn’t know who his parents were – he too is described as swarthy. I feel like there are better ways to describe a character’s appearance.
@Rose: That’s a wonderful description from the Crusie book. I know exactly what Phin looks like even though the author didn’t say anything about what he actually “looks like.”
@Rose: Yes, that is a great description from the Crusie novel. I’m reminded of the one time I attended a Crusie writing workshop. One of the things she recommended is not to describe something if the reader already knows what it looks like. So for example you don’t need to describe a business suit at all if the CEO is at the office. Mention something specific and unusual instead, like for example that his eyebrows are crooked or he has a British accent. That’s good advice, I think.
@Kareni: Love that Balogh description! Sorry, for some reason your comments got caught in the spam filter.
I’m with Sirius about too much description: less is way better and “slightly wind-blown Gabriel” says everything I want to know. Also: no self-examination in mirrors, never ever ever. Or, you can look, but puh-lease don’t tell me what you see. He brushes his curly black hair? Is that different from the straight blond hair he wore in a man-bun yesterday? That’s a lazy way of describing a character–actually too much distracting unnecessary information–and I’m already questioning whether I keep reading.
What I want is to see/hear/read the reaction of one main character to another; I want to know that something about that person, however small, attracted (or even irritated) the viewer. There is always something that makes us interested in a stranger and I will go to my grave saying it’s not that they’re gorgeous. Very few of us are gorgeous, so how on earth do we non-fiction characters know when we’re attracted to someone?
We notice a watch on the wrist of an arm revealed by rolled up sleeves. We (OK, me) stumble in our tracks at glimpsing that OMG fabulous head of red hair. We notice (true story) that the really big guy we just had lunch with can zigzag out of reach *so fast* when he thinks we tried to goose him. Reader, I married him, because the dichotomy between what he looked like and the reality of him was an absolute and ongoing delight.
Well, I’ve used up my allotment of words for the day/this topic. tl;dr: less is more, give me a real reason why one character is attracted to another.
Georgette Heyer described both Lord Damerel (Venetia) and Miles Calverleigh (Black Sheep), both aristocratic Englishmen, as “swarthy”, so I don’t think it always entails any kind of ethnic identity. (I suspect there are more “swarthy” Heyer heroes, but those were the only books I had in searchable Kindle form. Heyer Kindle books tend to be really expensive.)
I am still obsessed with the Will Darling Adventures, so I will mention that all three books are told from Will’s perspective, and KJ Charles scrupulously avoids the “hero looking in a mirror” ploy. Kim is described in some detail when Will first meets him, but everything we learn or infer about Will’s appearance comes up naturally in the course of the action. We learn Will’s eyes are hazel (“quite golden in some lights”) because a secondary character comments on them, and that his hair (which he struggles to control throughout the books) may be “fair” from a newspaper description in the third book (the description is said to be vague, but it’s not said to be inaccurate). There’s a conversation about his battle scars, and a comment about his “magnificent shoulders.” The only thing he really ruminates about are his hands, which are rough and calloused, in contrast to Kim’s hands, which are slim and well-kept. He comes back to that a few times, and I take it to be a metaphor for their class differences. Anyway, I think it is very well done.
I don’t mind men in fancy dress when it is historically appropriate. The hero of Georgette Heyer’s “Powder and Patch” became a Georgian dandy (lace, powder, etc.) after a disappointment in love, and the Scarlet Pimpernel dresses in high Georgian fashion as part of his masquerade. It’s rather fun to contrast the external frippery with the internal strength of the characters.
I often use the Cruise description of Phin from “Welcome to Temptation” as a masterful example of how to describe a character without using specific physical descriptors. In fact, I quoted it about a week ago in an AAR blog about how much description readers want/need. The other book I quoted was Mary Stewart’s “Madame, Will You Talk”, where IIRC the hero says to the heroine soon after they’ve met, “All right, you beautiful bitch, what have you done with my son?” I’ve no idea what Charity looks like other than her beauty must be striking indeed that Richard comments on it despite his anger.
@Kareni: I thought of Lucas from Heartless too when Jennie described the hero (I won’t name him, it’s actually a spoiler for that book) of The Duke’s Wager. I was “on tenterhooks” waiting for Kaetrin to chime in because she is an ardent fan of Heartless and of Lucas and she eats all that 18th-century stuff with a spoon, but unfortunately she had a finger injury and couldn’t type/participate. I admit that I’m not keen on the Georgian look on men but your quote made me think of the way Balogh introduces Avery, her unconventional hero from Someone to Love (very much through the heroine’s eyes):
Although I feel that this description goes on too long and that the predatory wild animal metaphor has become a romance genre cliche, I do love a lot of it, especially the bits about all the accessories. The rings, the watch fobs, the silver stud in the neckcloth, and, in later scenes, a snuffbox are a recurring motif when it comes to Avery’s description, as are the languid pose, the sleepy eyes, and the contradiction between the feminine impression that people keep thinking they should have of him and the source of danger that their instincts keep telling them he is.
One of the keys to Avery’s characterization is problematic, but I do love how from the beginning we sense that Avery has created in his outward appearance a mask to block and baffle anyone who tries to peer inside him and how, with the sleepy-eyed and languid air of boredom that he has cultivated to clothe himself in an impression of indifference, Balogh plants the seed that will blossom into Anna’s later realization that his mask is isolating him too much.
Long-winded or not, as descriptions that introduce a hero go, this one does a lot of heavy lifting and it also sets up multiple payoffs. It uses a couple of the techniques that have been mentioned, too–another character’s reaction (brought up by Darlynne) and describing what the reader wouldn’t imagine on their own (Jennifer Crusie’s advice).
@Darlynne and @Susan/DC:
Darlynne, re. your description of your husband,
And Susan, re. your comment on historical dandyish dress,
Reading your comments in quick succession made me think of the importance of contrast and contradiction to a hero’s description. Dichotomy is something that immediately conveys hidden depths. It shows us that there’s an inner man whose true character belies his outer appearance and that can hook us by making a character intriguing.
This reminded me of the (IMO masterful) way that Mary Jo Putney uses contradiction, mystery, suspense, and dichotomy to introduce Adrian de Lancey, the hero of her 1991 medieval romance Uncommon Vows, and to set the stage for his dramatic first encounter with the heroine and for the turbulent relationship that follows.
Warning: this book is highly problematic and was controversial even in the 1990s. Still, I loved it for many years so I own the e-book and am copying and pasting from it. I apologize in advance for how much I am about to quote.
The book opens with a prologue set in 1137, eleven years before the hero and heroine meet. Adrian’s illegitimate half-brother, Richard, and his father’s man at arms, Walter, return from an errand on Christmas Day to discover that Adrian’s father, mother, and all his other brothers have been slaughtered by the villain. Adrian is only fifteen and living in a monastery, preparing to take a monk’s vows. He isn’t even in the book’s first scene, yet when I read it I wanted to know more about him right away. Here is part of that scene (a conversation that takes place as they journey from the burned keep to the abbey where Adrian lives):
In the next scene, Richard and Walter arrive at Fontvaille Abbey.
Almost everything in this prologue, from the contrast between the violence of the burned keep and the serenity of the abbey, between the devoutness the abbot tells Walter Adrian possesses and the kiss Adrian bestows on his father’s scorched sword, in the metaphor comparing Adrian’s coolness of a moment earlier with his newly revealed “white heat of molten iron” and in the evolution of Sir William’s impressions of Adrian, who transforms in the veteran warrior’s eyes from “a sickly, undersized, over-godly boy” to a man whose resemblance, “in the deadly purity of rage” to “his maternal grandfather […], a warrior of legendary strength and viciousness” is both shocking and–even in this situation that demands vengeance–“not wholly welcome”) conveys that we are heading into a story about a fierce internal conflict and that this hero is going to be unpredictable and confounding. Putney does that by building the tension with one contradiction on top of another. Sometimes I wonder if this prologue is half the reason I loved this book so much for so many years.
And Darlynne–it squeezes every drop out of another character’s reaction.
@Kareni: I love this Balogh and a big part of it is because of the hero. Lucas is so sexy! And the description you post is great, because it makes being ‘ foppish’ elegant and not an affectation. In the book Lucas is cold and imposing, but as the romance progresses, he is so very tender and loving to Anna his new wife, to Ashley his brother, and to Anna’s deaf sister Emily. His outside persona–glossy fashionable cold imposingly elegant–mixed with his inner self–warm, loyal, loving, tender–makes for a complex hero. I love that–the complexity and the layers. It works for me much better than a static or flat character who is ‘rakish’ or said to be sexy, but feels like s cardboard figure.
@Rose: Wow what an amazing description! I havent read that book but this makes me want to. Its great play with words —the “glossy frat boy” hints at attractiveness, the “popular town boy” indicates at status, and the “rotten rich kid” at complexity and darkness. Somehow she creates depth with a few adjectives!!!
@Janine: This is terrific advice for sure! Because personality and character are shown in more than just physical looks. How you carry yourself, what you wear, how you interact with others, your facial expressions, ornamentation, all these things tell about who you are as much as as what physical body you live in.
@Janine: I love this description too Janine! And the contradictions work so well here–Avery comes across as unique and different as well as attractive. Authors sometimes lazily rely on status to indicate attractiveness, especially in historicals–i.e. just being a duke or aristocrat or wealthy is meant to be attractive—versus actually creating a character whose attractiveness lies not only in their power or status. For example, Avery isn’t attractive only because he is a powerful duke–it’s because of his layers as a person and the complexity of his character.
@Layla: I don’t know how well WTT holds up, but I loved it when I read it years ago – it’s my favorite Crusie, and definitely the funniest.
“Do you think the Church of Temptation is like the Church of Baseball?”
“Not if it’s Lutheran.”
@Etv13: It isn’t that swarthy is only used to describe villains, or only more frequently used to describe POC–after all, it means dark-skinned so that’s only sensible. It’s that IME, you’re much more likely to encounter the word when reading about a POC villain. A sultan who wants to acquire the heroine to serve as a slave in his harem is on average more likely to be described as swarthy than a sheik hero (those are often described as golden-skinned or having a built-in tan).
(Both of these tropes should be retired IMO.)
For obvious reasons I pay attention to how Jewish characters are portrayed in fiction and when they’re villainous they’re often described as swarthy. The use of swarthy was more common in my 1970s-1990s reading than it is now. Since the US has gotten more diverse there has been a positive shift. But it’s too late for swarthy to be salvageable for me.
Since we are on the topic of Heyer, the word “swarthy”, and Jewish villains, I’ll end with an example with this description of Mr. Goldhanger, the predatory, lecherous Jewish moneylender in her novel The Grand Sophy:
@Rose: Are there any other patterns that make descriptions not work that well for you?
@Kareni: Generally the heroes I like best and talk, dark and muscular but Luke from Heartless is nonetheless a favourite. In my brain his hair always turns dark (I can’t help it! LOL) but I adore his flair and self-possession. I love his makeup and fan and high heels. He is entirely masculine and entirely hot. Luke is the best!
@Janine: I’m sure it’s my love of Luke that made me so inclined to love Avery. He’s definitely another favourite and for much the same reasons. (But Luke is number 1).
@Kaetrin: I think the reason I like Avery better in this regard is that his look is a shield he has created for himself. Luke dresses in keeping with his times but Avery dresses a bit unusually even for his era. His outward appearance is crafted for a deliberate purpose. It allows him to have the element of surprise in social situations. He uses it to make others feel off-balance and ensure that he himself can’t be made to feel that way. In other words, it’s his way of claiming his power and the respect he deserves (not for his social position but for having the iron will and self-control that he has). To me, Luke was just clothing himself as everyone else did; it was unusual for the romance genre but not for a man of the 1800s to dress that way. Avery is diverging from the norms to lead people in circles. It takes a lot of confidence, too (especially given his past). Somehow all that is much sexier to me.
I pictured Luke with dark hair too. I think it’s because most of the Lukes I have read about in romance have had dark hair. There is always Luke Skywalker, though!
@Janine: This description of the moneylender is why I don’t like “The Grand Sophy” and can’t reread it. It would be one thing if it were one of her earliest books, but it was published in 1950 — several years after WWII ended and the horrors of the Holocaust were known. That is what makes this unforgivable to me.
I think everyone’s comments boil down to the fact that a purely physical description is pointless without some hints of the character’s personality or feelings (or what the character doing the describing imagines those to be).
As for me, while I appreciate the subtlety of an author sprinkling little pieces of the physical description throughout the book, I’ve already got an image of the character in my mind almost from the beginning. It’s formed through the character’s thoughts, dialogue, even their name. If I’m happy with my mental image I don’t always adjust it as the author doles out the clues (especially if the clues involve beards, long hair and my pet hate – tattoos) unless the character’s physical appearance or capabilities has a material effect on the plot. However I do like to see how the characters notice things about each other that makes them more attractive in their eyes.
Ultimately, if the author offers no description at all I can live with that; hearts and minds are far more important in a romance.
@Kaetrin: I love Luke too! In my earlier comment I misspelled his name . The way you describe his appeal is spot on. He’s definitely one of my top book husbands ( someone I’d love to marry in real life ;) he’s probably my favourite Balogh hero.
This is a fun conversation! I like this new feature.
I’m realizing that I tend to not pay very much attention to physical descriptions of characters. I also don’t picture characters in my mind. I’m just not visual in that way.
I don’t usually like it when characters describe themselves, whether it’s looking in the mirror or just in their thoughts. Like Sirius, I can’t think of any looking in the mirror examples but I do remember a Santino Hassell novel where the protagonist described himself as something like brash and blond (it was 1st person pov) and it just seemed so clunky and not how someone would normally think about themselves.
I really like it when an MC’s perception of their love interest’s appearance changes over the course of the romance. Maybe they think he’s too tall or kind of plain or way too good looking and then as they fall in love, their perception shifts. Having trouble thinking of a concrete example but I’m pretty sure at least one JAK heroine started out thinking her hero was too big and ended up being into his size.
One of my favorite introductions to a hero’s appearance is in Xeni by Rebekah Weatherspoon. It’s a marriage of convenience plot – they meet in her aunt’s lawyer’s office. Xeni notices right away how big and tall he is (forgetting his name) and likes what she sees. And she also can tell that his chair is too small and insists that the lawyer get a chair that’s big enough. I loved that. It’s such a great way of developing her character. And I loved the acknowledgement that being taller than average can be a drag. So often romance authors say that a hero is taller than 6′ as kind of a short hand of saying that he’s really masculine or hot or something but ignore all of the inconveniences of not fitting in chairs / doorways / etc. My husband’s 6’3″ and I really had no idea before I met him.
@Rose and Layla: WTT was my favorite Crusie too and yes, her most romantic *and* hilarious. That water tower cracked me up every time it was mentioned and I loved that the social satire and how the book poked fun at Romancelandia’s view of small towns.
@Etv13: The Will Darling descriptions sound well-handled. That kind of thing can also backfire, though. If every character is drawn to the hero, it can turn him into a Marty Stu.
@Susan/DC: When I stumbled on that Goldhanger scene I was having a great time and thinking it was my favorite Heyer yet and I’d give it an A. Boy, was I wrong. I haven’t been able to read her books since.
@oceanjasper: Interesting! My mental image can be formed by one thing in one book and another in a second. For example, if I read about someone named Shauna, I might picture her with red hair if I knew a Shauna with red hair when I was younger. I might picture a character as looking somewhat, but almost never exactly, like the cover model. Or it might be the description in the book. Some names are plain unattractive to me. Balogh has books with characters named Archie or Freddy or Bert–that makes it less likely that the character will appear attractive in my imagination. Personality comes into it too. All kinds of stuff.
And I erase mustaches always and beards often. There are attractive men with them in movies sometimes, but not in my imagination. My husband is balding with very short hair and I find that really attractive on him, but I can’t picture a bald hero as attractive when I read. Basically, my reader’s imagination is more judgemental and rebuffing when it comes to looks than I am in real life. None of that ruins a book for me though if it’s not referenced constantly. Like you say, hearts and minds are more important. I can love a hero’s heart regardless of his looks.
@cleo: That is a great way to get size across.
ARCHANGEL, by Sharon Shinn, is one of my favorite books, and the description of Gabriel, the hero, by Hannah (his stepmom), to Rachel, the heroine – who by then didn’t know anything about Gabriel, is one of my favorite descriptions ever:
“….. he takes most things seriously. He can be difficult. He can be very sure of himself, so other people’s opinions do not always matter to him. He thinks it’s a very easy matter to separate right from wrong, good from bad, so subtleties often elude him. He is not patient. But he is – he is never less than committed to making things right. Everything he does is with the goal of bringing goodness to the world. I can’t explain what I mean. There is no evil in him. That is a rare thing to say about anyone, even an angel.”
It captures his exact essence, and I love it.
@Lady Jaye: Ah, Archangel. I loved that book back in the day. I loved all the books in the series but Angel-Seeker and one of the novellas. Sharon Shinn has great descriptive powers more generally. Her descriptions of flight and of Rachel singing at the gloria were beautiful. And the scene where the mana came down from the sky was incredible. I should reread that sometime.
Have you read her recent Uncommon Echoes books? Echo in Emerald was her best t book in years IMO.
@Janine: I haven’t yet finished the first book int he Uncommon Echoes series. I got it as an audio book (first mistake), and unfortunately I can’t quite get the premise in my mind’s eye. Why Echoes? They don’t make much sense to me. I plan to purchase the DTB and see if it helps me u Der stand the premise better by reading instead of hearing it, if that makes any sense.
@Janine Ballard: Luke wasn’t just dressing in keeping with the time. He was a fashion leader. He brought cutting edge fashion to England from France where he’d been living. In the book when he used his fan he was regarded as particularly daring and people stare at him as being OTT and he doesn’t give a rip. Anna loves that about him. It’s a thing they share and laugh about how much fun it is and how they don’t care what people think. Luke’s fan is one of the things that makes Anna breathless when they first meet because he will do what he will do and he doesn’t care what others think. For Anna this is huge.
(Heartless is my fave Balogh and I have So Many Thoughts about it!! LOL)
I interpreted both Avery and Luke as marching to their own drum and dressing to please themselves and because they do it so confidently it’s so sexy!
@Kaetrin: I LOVE EVERYTHING ABOUT YOUR ANALYSIS (ALL CAPS TO SHOW THIS THIS!) I too love Heartless–and 99 percent of that is because of Luke!
@Janine: I was laughing so hard about your comments about erasing beards and mustaches! Me too, I’m not into them in my heroes (although for sure I can admire them in real life!). The name comment made me laugh also–some names for sure are unattractive and a turn off.
One random note–I love descriptions of eyes. Its the one descriptor or feature that really draws me in. Thats why I love Meredith Duran’s heroes–they all have pretty eyes.
@Lady Jaye: Its a wierd premise for sure. I had to suspend belief when reading but somehow it works! The romance does at least.
@Lady Jaye: Ack, the audio narrator on those was terrible. Such a sugary voice. I got all three as review copies but only listened to the first two and then bought the third in a digital edition. I liked the first quite a bit but the second was even better and more romantic. There was as much romance in it as fantasy. The third didn’t work for me but fortunately it’s not the kind of trilogy where that ruins the earlier books. The echoes do get explained eventually but not for a while. Book two (the one I loved best) does the best job of that of the three.
@Kaetrin: You are right, I had forgotten already! I went back to read my thoughts on Heartless and remembered why I didn’t find Luke physically appealing–it’s because Balogh brought up his masculinity more than she did with her other heroes.
Sometimes the more an author tries to assure me of something the more it backfires. I feel like the author doesn’t trust me to make up my own mind about that. I recently revisited Nalini Singh’s Angels’ Blood, the first Guild Hunter book, and was reminded of how Nalini Singh (and other authors in the genre, too) used to mention that the physically tough heroine was feminine–as if the reader would think otherwise because of her strength, agility, and fighting skills. That irritates me just as much.
Balogh does this with Avery some too but I’m able to get past it there because he has so much cleverness (as well as confidence). I agree with you, confidence is massively sexy (and too rare in Balogh’s heroes) and Luke did have that.
@Layla: My husband knows not to grow facial hair beyond five-o’clock shadow and he liked to joke that I must have been sexually abused by a man with facial hair as a child. I was not, but I finally figured out what did this to me. In Israel we kiss family members on both cheeks when we enter or leave one another’s homes. It’s a cultural thing, like hugging in the US. I do have a bearded uncle. He’s a sweetheart but I hated having his beard and mustache in my face as early as five, six years old.
@Darlynne: I am enjoying reading the comments very much, but I just was not sure I will have time to further participate due to work commitments . But I wanted to share couple of quotes from the book I will be reviewing soon :
This is the first meeting between the leads and this is what one of them notices about another:
“The man shifted a leather folder from one hand to the other. He was slim and pale, with fair, colourless hair and a face currently folded into an unpleasant expression that suggested he’d stepped in something on the street and its odours had only just reached his nose. It was, Robin reflected wistfully, an eminently punchable face.”
““What the bloody hell is this? Where’s Reggie?” “Who’s Reggie?” It had already been a difficult morning. Robin was not above returning fire with rudeness where rudeness had been offered. “Who are you, come to that?” A pair of blue eyes narrowed. They were the only mark of colour in the man’s countenance—indeed, in his entire appearance. His clothes were neat, expensively tailored, but all in shades as unremarkable and drab as his dishwater hair. “I’m the Queen of Denmark,” he said, coldly sardonic.”
To me there lies a great deal of fun in noticing how their perceptions of one another will be changing and we know that it will be changing when first impression is described like that :)
‘ A Marvelous Light” by Freya Marske.