It's been a very long time since the last I root for a literary character. Granted, I've been impressed with at least one character from every books I've read, but the last time that I rooted for one is with Leopold Gursky in The History of Love. Very recently, I root for Cassidy Thorpe from the young adult fiction The Beginning of Everything.
Note: This is not a book review. You can see for it somewhere. I love the book, but this time I won't be talking about the book. I'm talking about a person. Who practically doesn't exist, but amazing nonetheless.
Cassidy Thorpe is not the first-person narrator of the story, but she's definitely the star. The reason why is simple. She's really bright; when I say bright it means she's both smart and beautiful, and really, really interesting. She is a debate champion who just transferred from a prep school to public school in a small town. Like almost every other girl the young adult novel's boys fall in love with, she's hiding something that makes her thoroughly mysterious and enigmatic at the same time. Anyway, she's also funny and cheerful, and a lot like the infamous Summer Finn from 500 Days of Summer. Her personality is something that leaves people imagining what she's really like. She casually refers things to Shakespeare and recite lines from poems by Mary Oliver that none of her friends ever heard of. She knows words in foreign languages that can describe a moment that English fails to do. Basically, she's your standard Manic Pixie Dream Girl.
I love her character for all the aforementioned things, but I root for her primarily because of her sense of reality. She refused to be someone's dream girl just because she seems to be one. She wants people to know that she can be superior; but she doesn't become a jerk about it. And most importantly, because she has the ability that is so lacking in people these days: knowing when to stop.
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