The other day, I was sent an ARC of a book coming out later this year, and the author asked me what I thought about a specific character in the story.

Apparently, this character had been getting a lot of hate from reviewers and such like.

Anyway, I read the book, and I must say, I totally loved the character. She was bold and brassy, she could be abrasive, and had a bit of a foul mouth, she was forthright, she loved sex and wasn’t afraid to say so, and she knew what she wanted and had no qualms about going after the object of her desires.

In short, my kind of heroine. The anti-Mary Sue.

However, I suspect that even whilst we’re collectively screaming blue-murder about vanilla Mary Sues polluting the Romance landscape, some of us secretly hate sexually assertive women. (more…)