So, obviously, there are some books that are just awesome. Great writing, great story, great characters. Duh, right?
But sometimes, a story gets its hooks into a reader for a much more specific reason. There's something about it that makes you cry or laugh or pump a fist in the air or sleep with the book under your pillow. The X-Factor.
Every reader has their own set of X-Factors. I've tried to come up with some of mine:
--Horses, including carnivorous ones, but more than that--the people who love those horses. Extra bonus points if the people who love horses are brooding islander dreamboats (looking at you, Sean Kendrick.)
--Couples/characters with deep connections who are forcibly separated. I'm talking true, soulmate-level connections: whether it's Maddie and Julie in Code Name Verity or Henry and Clare in The Time Traveler's Wife, seeing two people who really love each other torn apart may seem cliche, but it's also guaranteed to make me ugly-cry and then carry the book around everywhere for a week.
--Good depictions of performance. Unfortunately, I can be very picky about descriptions of high school theatre, because it was my entire life as a teenager. My school usually did five shows a year, and I managed to act in or work on fifteen of them over the course of my four years. And we were super serious about it (note that I spell it with the more pretentious "re" ending. That's how serious we were.) So when I find a book that gets it right--whether it's theater, music, or dance--I get super-excited. (It's what made me fall in love with Elodie's MS when I started beta-reading it!)
Of course, all the books I've mentioned also have great writing, great story, and great characters. But the thing that really took hold of me and made me love them were my X-Factors. What are your X-Factors? What books have you loved because of your X-Factors?
I definitely think unrequited love and/or couples unable to be together (for a time) for some reason are x-factors for me. Also, a living breathing world that feels like another character in the novel, that is so richly imagined that I feel as though I'm there when I'm reading it. There are other x-factors, but these are the two that immediately sprang to mind. :)
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