Top 5 Sundays #9 - Favorite Fictional Families!

This week's Top 5 list focuses on favourite fictional families. These are the cohesive units bound by love and sometimes blood that provide our heroes and heroines with support, with lifelines, with sound arguments for claims of insanity. Some families are more involved, some are less in the know, but to be considered a real family the one thing they all have in common is love. Whether their son is a vampire, their sister sees dead people, their best friend's in love with a reaper or their in-laws vacation in Hell, the love binding this ragtag group of misfits together is undeniable and unconditional.

So, without further ado, here are my Top 5 Favorite Fictional Families!


#5 - The Davidsons from the Charley Davidson series by Darynda Jones

In the first book, you're introduced to a successful, stuck-up, brainiac sister, a step-mother with buckets of prejudice and nothing short of hatred (born from jealousy no less) for her second step-daughter, a loving albeit passive father and a protective detective uncle Charley assists with murder investigations. By the end of the second book, however, it becomes clear that first impressions couldn't be more wrong.

#4 - The D'Artigo Sisters from the Otherworld series by Yasmine Galenorn

When this series starts off, three sisters - a witch, a cat shifter, and a vampire - live together in a large Victorian house while investigating magic based crimes on behalf of the Fae crown in another world. And then Camille, the eldest, falls in love and subsequently marries a dark elf, a youkai demon and a dragon. Delilah has a failed relationship with a detective - who ends up with the Elfin Queen's niece, a doctor, later on down the series - before settling in with a dragon halfbreed for a fiancee. Menolly has a committed relationship with a puma shifter. Iris, Camille's coworker at the start of the series, moves in with the girls and recently married a leprecaun. Rozurial, an incubus, pops up while hunting a rogue vampire in the third book and hangs around to fight the Big Bad. An dream demon jumps sides at another point and takes refuge with the girls. Shamus, their cousin, comes to stay after a harrowing experience in the Otherworld...and it goes on!

#3 - The Jenson-Moore Pack from the Riley Jensen series by Keri Arthur

Riley and her twin brother Rhoan were kicked out of their birth pack for being halfbreeds - half vampire, half werewolf. For a long, long time they were all each other had in the world. Fast forward to their happily ever after glimpsed in the spin-off series, Dark Angels, and you've got both Riley and Rhoan happily mated - her with husband Quinn, him with long time boyfriend Liander. Thanks to Liander's sister volunteering to be their surrogate, Liander and Riley have five children: Ronan, Liana, Darci, Kian and Nika. For a couple of unwanted pups, Riley and Rhoan have done more than well for themselves, don't you think?

#2 - The Price-Healy family from Seanan McGuire's InCryptid series

This is a family of cryptozoologists. Verity is the main character, an ambitious dancer and dedicated monster observer. She has a brother, Alex, and sister, Antimony, and the three of them are descended from not one, but two (at least) long lines of renegade monster hunters who had the whacky idea that just because something wasn't human didn't mean it didn't deserve to live. Protective, loving, and supportive this family not only helps each other out with everything from monster research to relationship advice, they also provide pearl after pearl of hard earned wisdom. In Verity's own words, 

“Growing up in my family meant ambushes on your birthday, crossbows for Christmas, and games of dodge ball where the balls were occasionally rigged to explode. It also meant learning how to work your way out of a wide variety of death traps. Failure to get loose on your own could lead to missing dinner, or worse, being forced to admit that you missed dinner because your baby sister had tied you to the couch. Again.”

#1 - The Ranger Corps 2.0 from Kelly Meding's MetaWars series

You know that saying about blood being thicker than water? Turns out shared experiences trump blood. As children, Teresa, Gage, Renee, Ethan and Marco went through hell - literally. Their parents were superheroes which meant two things; one, they all inherited superpowers themselves and, two, supervillains were always trying to kill them. And then one day, in the middle of the battle that orphaned them, all the superpowers vanished. Skip ahead fifteen years and all of the sudden back the powers come and those five kids find themselves grown up and back together, doing the best they can to unravel the mystery, get a handle on long lost gifts and find their place in the not-so-friendly world they find themselves in. And they're doing all of that just like any family would - together.


And there you have it - my Top 5. Tune in next week for more. Ciao!