literary gluttony

In Praise of the Unlikeable Character (Yes, Her)

Some characters are designed to be loved. They’re warm, kind, loyal, brave. You root for them. You want them to win.

And then there are the others—the difficult ones. The ones who lie, manipulate, self-destruct, lash out, and make decisions so frustrating you want to reach through the page and shake them. Characters who are cold, ambitious, angry, or deeply, unapologetically flawed.

So why do we keep reading about them?
Why do we like the unlikeable?

Maybe it’s because they’re complicated in a way that feels deeply human. Perfect characters can start to feel plastic after a while—but give me someone messy, driven by desperation or fear or pride, and suddenly I’m interested. I want to understand them. I want to know where it all went wrong. I want to see how far they’ll go—and what, if anything, might break them open.

These aren’t the characters we aspire to be. They’re the ones we secretly relate to. The ones who say what we’re too polite to say. Who do what we don’t dare.
They’re villains in other people’s stories—and sometimes in their own.

But they’re also unforgettable.

So today, I’m raising a glass (and maybe a side-eye) to a few of my favorite gloriously unlikeable characters:

🥀 Characters I Shouldn’t Love But Do:

• Amy Dunne from Gone Girl – calculated, vicious, brilliant
• Nicolette Farrell from All the Missing Girls – unreliable, haunted, hiding everything
• Jude Duarte from The Cruel Prince – power-hungry, brutal, addictive
• Ronan Lynch from The Raven Cycle – angry, feral, and emotionally constipated
• Circe from Circe – bitter, sharp, and deeply wounded (aren’t we all?)

Some of these characters do evolve. Some don’t. That’s part of the magic.
You don’t have to like them—you just have to feel something.

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💬 Who’s on your unlikeable character list?
Drop a comment and confess your most controversial faves. I promise—this is a judgment-free zone (unless you’re here to defend Dolores Umbridge, in which case… we need to talk).