Favorite. Scenes. Ever.

Over at Smart Bitches they're having a contest to give away an illustration of Hubert the Bull, and in order to win you have to comment with a scene that you'd like to see illustrated from your favorite book(s). Thought I don't suppose it has to be your favorite book, it could just be a scene that logistically you're very confused about...

I picked the scene from one of my faves, Julie Garwood's Guardian Angel. To explain the context of the scene is to issue a monumental spoiler alert (seriously... I still consider this twist to be one of the best), but suffice it to say that part of the scene involves a burly pirate hauling the hero's mother out of the house, and insisting that the hero would be fine with this arrangement. I believe the phrase "Caine would want me to have her" is used more than once. Between that and the rest of the chaos going on around them, this is one of my favorite sequences in bookdom.

This leads me to a thought on a discussion I don't think we have yet had: favorite scenes.

I love the scene in Guardian Angel because it comes on the heels of the aforementioned glorious twist, which causes complete and utter chaos in the proceedings. Garwood does such and amazing job of juggling everything that is happening-- from Jade ordering Sterns to hide the silver under the bed, to Caine's realization that Jade has left the premises, the reader never gets lost, but is instead swept away to the point that you can imagine standing in the foyer at Cainewood looking back and forth until your head spins. And then Caine and Nathan start beating the crap out of each other. And it makes me smile.

And now I need to ditch the Amazon pile and go home and read Guardian Angel.

But the point is that there are some scenes that are so affecting that you flip back to them again and again to relive that emotion, in addition to re-reading the book in it's entirety to capture every nuance of amazingness.

Another scene that jumps to mind is the scene in Stephanie Laurens' Captain Jack's Woman, when Kit is shot and needs to put up a front to the head of the local militia in order to keep her identity a secret (those who have read both books will note that yes, apparently I like my heroines red-headed and steeped in secret identity), and so comes down to breakfast with complete and utter calm, despite the fact that she had a bullet removed from her side not five hours earlier (this is also where she finds out her lover has not been altogether truthful, either). Considering that this is one of only two Stephanie Laurens books that I have ever finished, I think it says a lot about the scene that I consider it to be quite memorable. And not in a bad way. Because there are those too.

But I don't have the brain function to think of them right now. Maybe next time.