Introducing Tessa Niscombe

Our girl Tessa as she appears at the start of Boyfriend Practice, the opening book in the Blue Rose Series

The importance of a central character in any book, let alone a series, cannot be overstated.

Romantic fiction, in particular, requires the reader to be deeply invested in their central character. After all, it is through their eyes that the reader hopes to savour the intimacy and drama of enormous passion and thrilling sensuality. Tessa Niscombe delivers a refreshingly different kind of hero in the Blue Rose Series.

Tessa was drawn from the author's real-life experience. To say that she is a semi-autobiographical character may be a step too far, but she is nonetheless someone very firmly rooted in the real world.

There is a particular innocence to Tessa's personality when the reader first encounters her. She is trapped, a passenger in every sense, on the dreaded journey back to Queen Victoria's College after celebrating her 18th birthday at home in the idyllic coastal town of Fenchester. She is once again reliving her feelings of abandonment that came from being torn from her family at 10 years of age and placed into the residential school system.

Throughout the Blue Rose Series, even as she travels around the world, Tessa's personality remains rooted in the truths revealed in the opening chapter of the first book. She seeks approval and love, which can, in turn, lead her to make decisions with terrible consequences.

Sensuality and desire are essential to the genre, and Tessa also has these in abundance. In the 1990s, young women had an unprecedented opportunity to explore every possible freedom and stimulation, embodied in the 'ladette' culture of the times that Tessa lives fully.

She is not perfect. She makes mistakes. She is sometimes thoughtless towards those who show her true love and care. At other times, she will throw herself into situations and towards characters who often court disaster.

And yet, it is to be hoped that the reader will continue to cheer for Tessa. That they will yearn for her to find joy and fulfilment. And that the sensual, talented and deserving woman they see will recognise those things in herself that keep the reader turning each page.

Tessa doesn't have superpowers. Neither is she blessed with uncanny intuition. She is on a quest for happiness. The wealth and privilege into which she was born are of little relevance to her story, but her path towards finding real fulfilment is shared with us all.