The best historical, fantasy, SF, and mystery books with characters you fall in love with

This book has so many of my favorite elements: believable friendships among three very different women, Bletchley Park during World War II, with spies, and characters I adored: the debutante, the working-class girl, and the girl we’d now say is “on the spectrum.” I loved this book so much that I read everything Kate Quinn wrote, but this one’s still the best.

When Beth is threatened with a lobotomy, the suspense was terrifying. I kept thinking of my aunt whose existence was a family secret for years. I laughed and cried over this book and the women who helped win the War but had to keep their work a secret, even if it cost them everything and everyone they loved.

This historical novel, with its time travel and romance elements, swept me away into the 18th century and never let up. I’ve now read it and its sequels many times, and they’re still magic.

When I read a hundred-page description of a wedding told from four different points of view, I don’t get confused or lose track of a single character. I fell in love with Jamie. Doesn’t everyone? But the love story is only one part of the whole. In one scene, Claire kills a wolf with her bare hands. It would be the climax of another author’s story. Here, it’s just one incident among many. I believe it, too. Jamie and Claire are larger than life, convincing, and oh-so-lovable.

This is the ultimate mix of historical fiction and fantasy: the Napoleonic Wars with dragons. What I love most about Temeraire is his voice. When this dragon has an opinion or his feelings are hurt, it’s unique and unmistakable. He and his chosen companion, Lawrence, will show Napoleon what the Royal Aerial Corps can do.

I relish Novik’s inventive battles redesigned for draconic warfare, the rich variety of the dragons, and how individual their personalities are. But don’t tell the British public that dragons command in the Corps. That would never do! I chuckle at the British government’s pigheadedness. But it’s also painful to see soldiers in the field thwarted as they try to do their job—highlighted by Lawrence’s attempts to explain this to Temeraire.

I love not only the main characters in this book, Miles and Ekaterin, but almost all the characters. It’s space opera crossed with comedy of manners. Miles is courting Ekaterin, and being too smart for his own good, he treats it like a military campaign.

I laugh till I cry every time I read the funniest scenes. These people are all so real and so appealing that I want to go home with them. I want to sit down to dinner with Count and Countess Vorkosigan and the Koudelkas and their four daughters. I want to listen when Miles’s parents give him wise and witty advice and when he spirals out of control with his own particular genius. I’d love to be Ekaterin’s friend.

I fell in love with SecUnit, aka Murderbot, the main character in this book, because its voice is so authentic and lovable as it explains how it detests humans with their feelings and tendency to ask questions, leak fluids, and try to have relationships with it.

Having successfully escaped an electronic control that amounts to slavery, it just wants to be left alone. But that doesn’t happen. I found Murderbot most endearing when it was denying most strenuously that it cared. I couldn’t wait to read all the Murderbot stories after discovering this first one.

I could appreciate the outsider perspective, and the character’s attitude toward humans—slow! stupid! always have to be rescued!—made perfect sense.