Six for Sunday: Devious Main Characters

Hey there! This week I’m participating in Six for Sunday, a meme hosted by Steph at A Little But a Lot. This month, the focus is on book characters, and this week’s topic is: 

Devious Main Characters

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1. Leigh from Poison and Honey

In order to complete her mission, Leigh has to be devious. She poses as a servant to infiltrate the palace and find out more about who abducted her sister and other humans. Dredarion is also devious and not always honest about his motivations and goals.

Title: Poison and Honey

Author: Kristen Brand

Series: Dark and Otherworldly (Book 1)

Publication Date: July 15, 2020

Synopsis: Leigh Morgan has known that magic existed ever since an unearthly monster abducted her sister. It’s why she’s in Otherworld now, posing as a servant in its dark, decadent palace. She’s gathering intelligence and working with a small band of allies to bring down the Others and free their human captives. Her mission depends on blending in, so the last thing she wants is to attract the attention of a cunning prince.

Dredarion Rath wants one thing: to disgrace his older brother and prove himself the worthier heir to the throne. And out of all the servants in the palace, he chooses Leigh to help him. Just her luck.

Now Leigh has to keep her work a secret from a bewitching man who sees right through her–and who’s not nearly as cold and inhuman as he seems. She can’t screw this up, or the humans forced into servitude will never go home. But juggling two conspiracies at once, it’s only a matter of time before it all comes crashing down, and the man she’s falling for has her executed for her betrayal… 

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2. Eva from The Book of Lost Names

Eva from The Book of Lost Names forges the identities of hundreds of children to help them escape to Switzerland during World War II. Some people might call her devious. I call her heroic, brave, and amazing!

Title: The Book of Lost Names

Author: Kristin Harmel

Page Length: 400

Publication Date: July 21, 2020

Publisher: Gallery Books

Synopsis: Eva Traube Abrams, a semi-retired librarian in Florida, is shelving books one morning when her eyes lock on a photograph in a magazine lying open nearby. She freezes; it’s an image of a book she hasn’t seen in sixty-five years—a book she recognizes as The Book of Lost Names.

The accompanying article discusses the looting of libraries by the Nazis across Europe during World War II—an experience Eva remembers well—and the search to reunite people with the texts taken from them so long ago. The book in the photograph, an eighteenth-century religious text thought to have been taken from France in the waning days of the war, is one of the most fascinating cases. Now housed in Berlin’s Zentral- und Landesbibliothek library, it appears to contain some sort of code, but researchers don’t know where it came from—or what the code means. Only Eva holds the answer—but will she have the strength to revisit old memories and help reunite those lost during the war?

As a graduate student in 1942, Eva was forced to flee Paris after the arrest of her father, a Polish Jew. Finding refuge in a small mountain town in the Free Zone, she begins forging identity documents for Jewish children fleeing to neutral Switzerland. But erasing people comes with a price, and along with a mysterious, handsome forger named Rémy, Eva decides she must find a way to preserve the real names of the children who are too young to remember who they really are. The records they keep in The Book of Lost Names will become even more vital when the resistance cell they work for is betrayed and Rémy disappears.

An engaging and evocative novel reminiscent of The Lost Girls of Paris and The Alice Network, The Book of Lost Names is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the power of bravery and love in the face of evil.

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3. Kai from The Fae and the Fallen

Kai is devious, mean, and a terrible bully. He is a character that you want to trust but aren’t really sure if you should.

Title: The Fae and the Fallen

Author: Brittni Chenelle

Series: Gifted Fae Academy (Year One)

Page Length: 275

Publication Date: April 2020

Synopsis: My first kiss nearly killed me—literally.

When 80% of the population is gifted with touch magic, it’s best to keep your hands—and your lips—to yourself. Especially if you’re an ungifted serf like I am.

The problem is, the most dangerous guy at Gifted Fae Academy is the one I want to touch more than anything, even as I draw the attention of the school’s most gorgeous Apprentice Fae.

When my entry exam leads to the revelation that I may not be as Ungifted as I previously believed… well… surviving until graduation might prove harder than I thought—particularly when a certain fatal touch may be worth the risk.

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4. Hope from Duplicate Bride

As soon as Hope agrees to pretend to be her twin sister, the deception begins. It’s a slippery slope for Hope, who almost instantly regrets her choice.

Title: The Duplicate Bride

Author: Ginny Baird

Page Length: 368

Publication Date: Sept. 29, 2020

Publisher: Entangled: Amara

Synopsis: Hope Webb can’t believe her twin sister, Jackie, is begging her to swap places and play fiancée at Jackie’s pre-wedding festivities. Sure, it’s only a business-deal sort of marriage, but Hope is a carb-loving teacher who enjoys curling up with a good book. Jackie is a workaholic whose idea of a good time is a brisk five-mile run at the crack of dawn. The two sisters couldn’t be more opposite.

Now Hope is stuck in the middle of a warm, tight-knit family she can’t help but adore and a groom who turns out to be entirely wonderful…for her.

Hotel magnate Brent Albright knows something is off about his fiancée, but he doesn’t care. Gone is the driven woman with similar career goals, and in her place is someone warm and funny who not only charms his family but him as well. She’s doing everything she can to avoid him, but that’s probably just nerves. Two people about to wed couldn’t know each other less.

Now Brent is determined to woo his fiancée, for real this time, because the more he gets to know her, the more his sweet fiancée turns out to be entirely wonderful…for him.

And that’s when things start to get really complicated…

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5. Edith from Miss Graham’s Cold War Cookbook

Edith is devious in the best of ways. She acts as a spy to find out more about possible Nazis and sends intel to the British through recipes.

Title: Miss Graham’s Cold War Cookbook

Author: Celia Rees

Page Length: 512

Publication Date: July 7, 2020

Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks

Synopsis: World War II has just ended, and Britain has established the Control Commission for Germany, which oversees their zone of occupation. The Control Commission hires British civilians to work in Germany, rebuild the shattered nation and prosecute war crimes. Somewhat aimless, bored with her job as a provincial schoolteacher, and unwilling to live with her stuffy genteel parents any longer, twentysomething Edith Graham applies for a job with the Commission—but is instead recruited by the OSS. To them, Edith is perfect spy material…single, ordinary-looking, with a college degree in German. And there’s another thing—the OSS knows that Edith’s brother went to Oxford with one of their most hunted war criminals, Count Kurt von Stabenow, who Edith remembers all too well from before the war.

Intrigued by the challenge, Edith heads to Germany armed with a convincing cover story: she’s an unassuming schoolteacher sent to help resurrect German primary schools. To send information back to her OSS handlers in London, Edith has crafted the perfect alter ego, cookbook author Stella Snelling, who writes a popular magazine cookery column that embeds crucial intelligence within the recipes she collects. But occupied Germany is awash with other spies, collaborators, and opportunists, and as she’s pulled into their world, Edith soon discovers that no one is what they seem to be. The closer she gets to uncovering von Stabenow’s whereabouts—and the network of German civilians who still support him—the greater the danger. 

With a unique, compelling premise, Miss Graham’s Cold War Cookbook is a beautifully crafted and gripping novel about daring, betrayal, and female friendship.

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6. Mera from I Am Elite

Mera has to pretend to be something she’s not in order to protect her family and friends. Reluctantly pushed into deceiving everyone, she has to be devious in order to survive.

Title: I Am Elite

Author: K.A. Westra

Page Length: 269

Publication Date: March 26, 2020

Synopsis: Earth is no longer our own. The Elite saved us from extinction over a hundred years ago. They healed our planet and cured our sick. In exchange we gave them a home.
For many years we coexisted in peace. But now the Elite are trying to gain full control over all humans.
Mera is forced to pretend to be Elite in order to protect her family, getting her heart involved only makes things more complicated. She fights her own insecurities and doubts as she has to prove herself as strong as the Elite.
Her strength and motivation helps her through heartache, rebel attacks and difficult choices. But what will she do when she faces the anger of the human rebels and the wrath of an Elite King?

A story of finding strength in yourself, even when the world says you are weak.

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Can you think of other devious main characters? Do you agree/disagree with my choices? Comment below!