Hey everyone! Today I’m talking about book crushes—and by that, I don’t mean crushes that characters in books have on other characters, but crushes that readers have on characters in books. Everyone seems to get them—I see people talking about them everywhere in the bookish community. There have even been books written about readers with book crushes, specifically about what would happen if a book crush could become a real-life crush (Between the Lines by Jodi Picoult and Samantha Van Leer, as an example—I’m sure there are others)It’s such a common phenomenon and, I have to confess, I feel a little left out.
Because, you see, I’ve never had a book crush.
That’s not to say I haven’t connected with characters—of course I have. There are so many amazing characters I love, too many to list here, and a large number of which I have already talked about in various list posts on this blog. For me, though, even when the character is the kind of person I would be attracted to in real life, all of my emotions toward them are purely platonic. I feel like I’m friends with the character, and I wish that I could be friends with them in real life, or just hang out with them for a while, but that’s all.
Maybe that’s because I’m just a heartlessly pragmatic kind of person, and I don’t see the point in crushing on someone who is not real and never will be. I’m also the kind of person who rarely if ever cries during a book (in fact, I can only think of a handful of times where I even teared up a little, and zero times where I full-on cried). So I guess that could be part of it.
Maybe it’s because I don’t want to set my standards too high. After all, everyone knows that fictional boys are always going to be better than real boys could ever hope to achieve.
Or maybe it means I’m not truly immersing myself in the books the way I should. If other people can get so deep into a story world that they actually fall in love with the characters and actually cry during sad parts, then why can’t I, too?
I don’t really know, honestly. It’s just the way I’ve always been.
All I know is that I’m curious what it’s like. So, I guess that’s the point of this post. All you people reading this, have you ever had a crush on a fictional character? If so, what is it like? Let me know down in the comments.
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I don’t really know what my goal was for this post, exactly, but that’s about all that I have for today. Thank you so much for reading, and I’ll see you soon with another post.
-Ariel