8 Characters that had a Worse Year Than You Did | Goodbye 2016

We all know that 2016 wasn’t the best year for our great Earth, and I think most of the population is ready to greet 2017 with weary, yet hopeful hearts.

But, as the saying goes, “I cried because I had no shoes until I saw a man that had no feet.” Downer, I know, but it’s my inspiration for this post! While 2016 was sort of a disaster there are a lot of book characters that probably had worse years than you did. These aren’t necessarily book characters that had a bad year this year, because some of these books weren’t published this year but… you get the picture.

WARNING: I’ll put the name of the book before the little description of why their year sucked, which will be spoilery, so if you haven’t read the book, you probably don’t want to read the text below the title.

Marguerite from The Firebird Trilogy by Claudia Gray

Well, the list goes on and on for Marguerite. First her dad dies, and she goes on a quest to find the murderer and falls in love with him. PLOT TWIST! The dad is actually alive, the love interest isn’t a murderer, but the best friend is actually an evil counterpart sent in from another dimension. Then the love interest gets splintered into a bunch of pieces, alternate dimensions start getting destroyed and the fate of the entire multiverse rests on Marguerite’s shoulders. Pretty stressful, I’d say.

Mare from Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard

I mean, in retrospect, not much happened to Mare Barrow. Other than her brother faking his death, being yanked into a power-hungry society, being betrothed to a traitorous psychopath and learning to deal with a brand new set of powers. I guess she had a pretty chill year after all.

James Watson from A Study in Charlotte by Brittany Cavallaro

Poor James Watson. He had to move to a new school and then get accused of murder, two, three times? Then his best friend backstabbed him, and the icing on the cake? Those unrequited feelings for Charlotte Holmes? Killer (pun intended).

Cadence from We Were Liars by E. Lockhart

I’m gonna be real with you guys: I absolutely ADORED this book… but half the time I had no idea what the heck was happening. In a good way, if that’s possible. The writing was so poetic and moving that sometimes I was just going with the flow and it was totally fine! However, if you did read this, you probably picked up on the fact that Cadence’s father abandoned her and her mother, she suffered serious brain damage after almost drowning (from what I can remember) and then her cousins and her boyfriend died in a house fire that they started themselves while they were still inside the building. All in all, not the #BestYearEva.

Maddy from Everything Everything by Nicola Yoon

I think I wanted to add this to the list mostly because I have so many feels for this book since I read it a few weeks ago. BUT! Maddy did have a pretty disappointing year. Or life, I should say. She lived eighteen years thinking that she could never go outside, fell in love with the boy next door, got her best and only friend/nurse taken away from her, went to Hawaii and almost died, then found out that, hey, she wasn’t allergic to the outside anyway and just had a mentally unstable mother… #awkward.

Etta from Passenger by Alexandra Bracken

Where to start with Etta Spencer? She had her dreams of becoming a world-famous violinist crushed like a bug under a steel-toed boot, her teacher was murdered by her own mother, she found out about a family she’d never met! And they turned out to be evil, her love interest and fellow main character Nicholas Carter (*swoons*) almost died of the common cold and then she actually died, or rather, got shoved into The Wheel of Fortune of time loops to be thrown into whatever time in history it chooses. Good times.

Aaron from More Happy Than Not by Adam Silvera

So the deal with Aaron is… you know what? It’s too soon. It’s ALWAYS gonna be too soon to express my feels for this INCREDIBLE novel.

Harry Potter from the entire freaking Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling.

Last but not least, Harry Potter, otherwise known as The Most Unfortunate, Unlucky Character to Walk the Face of the Fictional Earth. Sorry Harry, but nobody needs to tell you how much your life sucked. Between being attacked by the back of your teacher’s head to having to live in a literal broom closet, and watching almost every single person you loved die… things were not looking up for you. Is it bad that I’m laughing right now? Probably.

It’s true. 2016 was a struggle. Personally, I had a pretty good 2016: I started this blog (Yay! Right?) I went to high school, which I’m loving, in part because middle school really sucked and because high school has a crazy big library with a crazy big YA section, I started a book twitter, which I’m also loving, I got the confidence to make some book nerd friends online which I’ve always been too nervous to do… strange, it seems everything great that happened to be this year is book related! But to anybody that had a truly awful two thousand and sixteen, I offer internet hugs.

How did the book community do in 2016? I look around and see a lot of sad faces, but we made progress guys! Sure, there are some people that are determined to diminish and erase the strides we’ve taken towards promoting more diverse and #ownvoices literature, but these are all learning experiences and yet another reason why diversity is so important. I personally joined the diversity movement this year, so that was exciting, too.

Positive thoughts for 2017? Remember, as one of my favorite bands (Florence + The Machine) sings, “It’s always darkest before the dawn.”

Can you think of any incredibly unlucky, unfortunate characters? On a scale of 1-10 how bad was 2016 for you, and how many hugs do you need? Tell me in the comments! 🙂

Stay bookish,

Jordyn