If you could make ONE (only one) book boyfriend real, have him as your life partner and live happily ever after with him, who would it be?
I looooove that this question is going around! Let me tell you, I have a clear and unwavering answer to this and it has remained unchanged since the moment I first laid eyes on the ink pressed into the paper describing this man.
I have to admit, I'm not sure why Daughter of No Worlds is not more popular. I mostly see Serpent and the Wings of Night being the most commonly discussed Carissa Broadbent book when it comes to the online space. But The War of Lost Hearts trilogy is one of the most sweeping, breath-taking, and beautifully written fantasy romances I have ever read.
Let me introduce you to Max:
Officially licensed art by: alicia.mb.art
I understand Max so deeply. He is no doubt a Virgo who just wants to live in peace in an isolated cottage and be left alone with his garden. But he also has a heart so full of love and loyalty, and is one of the most trustworthy, passionate (even if in his own cynical and reserved way) reliable, and green flag filled MMC's I have ever read.
This book completely altered my brain chemistry and made me love tropes I was usually neutral to or annoyed by because they were so well done: Grumpy x Sunshine, reluctant hero, ect. This man may want to live in peace and tend to his garden, but at the tiniest spark of meaningful hope and belief that things that change, he will throw down harder than anyone, even if he is a little cranky about it along the way. I genuinely would want to live my life alongside this man, and I can see us starting a non profit together providing artists and writers grants to fellow women and children like me who struggle with debilitated chronic illness and struggle to keep afloat in this capitalist hellhole in which we reside here in the US.
I feel like I'm just pitching this book now, but one of the things I love about Max and Tisaanah's relationship is the deep respect they have for each other. They believe in their cause and their fight because they believe in each other. They believe in a future of peace and safety and prosperity because they want the other to have it. They are both such incredible people in the eyes of the other, and it makes them believe in the greater good. Maybe that's cheesy to some, but I thought it was so beautiful.
Somehow Carissa Broadbent is able to weave the fight for bettering the world alongside all of these small tender moments that make it all worth it. It simply wouldn't work as well if they didn't look at each other like they paint the sky.
Anywho, here are some of my favorite Max moments:
"I figured you should have something both beautiful and functional, like you."
He said it so quickly that it almost didn't register. I whipped my head around to look at him. "Max," I breathed, touching my heart with exaggerated awe, "you think I'm functional?"
A dancing smile glinted in his eyes. "I think," he said, "that you are breathtakingly functional.
Our life settled into a pulse, a heartbeat, a collection of breaths. In the silence between them, I memorized the cadence of Max's barefoot steps padding down the hallways at night, the way one single muscle in his throat twitched when he was stressed, the whisper of a laugh that always followed one of my quips (however unfunny). I learned that one side of his smile aways started first - the left side, a fraction of a second before the right - and that he loved ginger tea above all else and the list of things he wasn't made for.
And, in turn, he quietly memorized me, too. I knew he did, because one day I realized he had long ago stopped asking me how I took my tea and we mysteriously always had a never-ending stock of raspberries, even though I knew he didn't like them.
The way I look at it", he said, very solemnly, so quietly that his words slipped into the air like steam, "you didn't forget what you were. I think you remembered. And I hope no one ever again has the fucking audacity to tell you otherwise.
I had forgotten that people could be that way. I had forgotten that someone, somewhere, was painting terrible pictures of their wife in a garden. I was so far gone that I didn't even remember that that kind of mundane contentment actually existed, least of all in the same moments as such terrible things. [...] I thought, 'Well. I can make a garden.'
He stepped outside, shivered, looked up at the sky, and declared, "I'm not made for this," before wandering back into the house.
I quickly learned that Max was apparently only "made for" an exceptionally narrow set of environments, temperatures, activities, and interactions.
I couldn't honestly go on forever. I could write every single thing Max has ever said in this Tumblr post. I love him, your Honor. And now my heart is aching and soaring, and it's time for me to do a reread.
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