Top 10 of 2012: Best Book Boyfriends of 2012

This one will be interesting. Normally, this kind of a post would be handed over to Gabby (as you can see from all of her Attractive Characters posts) but she's otherwise occupied at the moment. So here I am! I know, you all must be so crushed.

I'm going to broaden things up here a bit and say that the best book girlfriends are also included because sometimes the main character is male, and more often the female main character is pretty good at the whole relationship thing too.

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Tod

Tod wins. Hands down. Can I just leave it at that? No? Really? But why?! Tod is just too awesome to put into words, especially without revealing too much from this book and ones before it. There is absolutely nothing bad I can say about him. He's perfect (which I'm sure would stroke his ego too much for his own good). Fans of Rachel Vincent's Soul Screamers series have been waiting so long for Tod to step out into the spotlight, and now that he's here, there is no way we're letting him go. He's too hilarious, and chocolate loving, and just plain awesome to ever do without. Kaylee really deserves him.

Daemon

I really debated about including Daemon in this list. I wasn't exactly his biggest fan in Obsidian, and I thought that he was way too full of himself for his own good. And that's still true but.... he's actually being a sort of acceptable person (or alien) right now. It was really adorable in this book when he was trying to prove to Katy that there was more going on with them than the "alien mojo." And he brought her a chocolate chip cookie, so.... yeah. That may have had something to do with it.

Michael

Time for more aliens! Except this time the guy is human.... sort of. We see more of Michael in the first book, Exiled, and I fell in love with him from the start. Michael is just one of those people that you can't help but feel sorry for. He'd had a pretty rough childhood filled with all kinds of horrifying abuse and "experimentation," but regardless of all of that, there was nothing he wanted more than for his parents to love him. He was kind and loyal even to people who didn't deserve it, and c'mon, he followed Venus to another planet for crying out loud! Now that's love!

Zoe

Here's our sole girl on this list! She's a complicated one to fawn over because I can't really reveal anything that she does for the guy she loves because that would ruin too many parts of the story for you. So to tide you over, here's one of my favorite of the book's quotes between Zoe and her sister:  
"'It's his name I look for on the list everyday' 
'Because you love him?' 
'No. Because I could have.' 
'It's the same thing,' she says, 'You just don't know it yet.'"

Jace

I wasn't a huge fan of Jace when I first started reading the Mortal Instruments series. In fact, I'm still not a huge fan of him now. Whereas Gabby will assure you he's completely amazing, I usually just tolerate him. There's nothing horribly wrong with him now that he's mostly past being a royal pain, but the thing that I do appreciate is how much he cares about his family, Clary included. Yes, he does tend to have a bit of an inflated ego at times (or almost always....), but he is always willing to put the people he loves in front of himself.

Lucas

For me, there are usually one or two moments in a book that I remember above all else, and in each of the Shadow Falls novels they've involved Lucas. Lucas rescuing Kylie from her underground prison, Lucas dancing with her outside after Perry and his fireball fiasco, and, my personal favorite, Lucas and Kylie hiking together in the creek near the dinosaur bones. I'd always thought it was really sweet when he talked about living next to her when they were young and how he protected her from the bullies after school when they were just little kids. You wouldn't think someone like Lucas would be "adorable," but he can definitely surprise you.

Bailey

I personally don't think that Bailey got enough page time in this novel, but I really enjoyed watching him grow up from being twelve years old the first time we saw him. He was always so full of life and wanted to be more than his family had planned for him to be. Bailey was a dreamer, but he was willing to be realistic, even if he wished he didn't have to be. The circus really was perfect for him, and I was rooting for him and Poppet the whole time. He was willing to go through so much to get back to her, and his journey to find Poppet and the circus again was my favorite part of the novel.

Perry

I thought Perry was great even before he fell in love with Aria. His love and loyalty to his nephew, Talon, was amazing, and his determination to bring him back home was inspiring. Even when he hated Aria for being a Dweller like the people who kidnapped Talon, he kept his "savage" humanity and refused to let her die in the Aether storms. And once they do fall in love, it gets even better. Especially after you read the second book, which I can't say anything about.

Roar

Yes, I noticed that this is the same book as before, but it's not breaking any rules because there is no annoying love triangle going on here. Roar's too cool for that. While he is, without a doubt, my favorite character in either novel, he never tries to fight Perry for Aria because he's in love with Liv, Perry's sister. He is so loyal and faithful to her, it's not even funny. We don't even meet Liv, and we can still tell how in love with her Roar is. He will literally do anything to find her again, even more so in Through the Ever Night which I still can't talk about!



 

Kaidan

Kaidan was one of those other guys I wasn't sure if I was going to include. He's arrogant, completely self-centered, and an all together pain in my rear end. But he has his moments, and that's why he's still here. He may not be the nicest guy, but he still cares about Anna more than he's willing to reveal at first. That moment with the necklace was so sweet, and their road trip together was definitely my favorite part of the book. Yeah, technically is "job" interferes with ever getting romantically close to anyone, but later on, he's willing to risk just about anything for her.

 

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I'm sure that I've missed more than my fair share of great guys (and girls) today. Who do you think I should have included? Or do you think that some of the characters up here don't really deserve their place? Let me know!