I will be the first person to tell you that I love characters. Obviously, the plot of a story is important, but if the reader doesn't fall in love with a character or two, the plot doesn't matter. Dan Brown's books have been huge successes in the past that have spawned copycats. I think I've read two of them. They were fine. My main problem is that all I remember about the main character is that he had a Mickey Mouse watch. That doesn't really flesh out the character for me. I didn't want to hang out with him. I didn't want to date him. And I didn't want him telling me the amount of parachute I needed to jump out of a plane and live.

My biggest pet peeve is when authors create books where the main female character is waiting for her Prince Charming to come save her. I hate the message that those books send to the teenage audience. When a female character's qualities are only that she's clumsy, in need of constant rescue, and quiet as a mouse, I am immediately turned off by the book. I hate the message that the book is most likely inadvertently selling, "Females need males to save them and make them popular". Yikes. Count me out on that one. I respect Catherine in Wuthering Heights more. Obviously, she wasn't running for sainthood, but at the very least, her character did something. Anything.

Yes, it's lovely to have a nice looking male lead, and sometimes that is the person in real life to save you. Other times, your friends or family are the ones to jump in to the deep end to pull you out of the water. Most often though, we as people have to save ourselves. We make the decision every day to battle through whatever problems we have. Why shouldn't characters reflect that strength?

No SOS signal from this girl.