The Importance of Friendship

I’m currently ruminating on how magical those friendships can be from the airport because I just spent the weekend in Las Vegas with one of my best friends from childhood. It was an amazing whirlwind weekend, full of fun and fabulous food and entertainment. But what really made it precious was being with a fantastic group of people gathered together for a common purpose and by the bonds of friendship. We might not have been accomplishing valiant deeds or facing dangerous foes like the people in my books, but I still got a taste of the camaraderie that is a hallmark of the found family trope, and a sense of why it is so central to my stories. My books, like my life, are made richer because of the friendships in them.

Found family is one of my favorite tropes, and really forms the heart of the Hands of Destin series. The main characters all know each other from training together as adolescents, meeting during a difficult period in their life, far from home and everything familiar. The bonds in their friend group–their found family–inform all of their actions in the books. Under all the magic and adventure, my stories are about human connection, the way relationships shape, challenge and support my characters. Friendships—found family—is a huge part of that.

The bonds we make with our peers, especially during formative periods of our life (like in college or high school) can be even more powerful than the bonds of family. There is something special about the support and closeness of people who are in your life by choice rather than the genetic lottery. As the saying goes, “The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.”

Do you have any precious friends like that, or favorites that you’ve read about? What kind of relationships (other than the love interest) do you enjoy seeing reflected in romance novels?

---

Jaycee Jarvis has been an avid romance reader since devouring all the Sweet Dreams books her middle school library had to offer. Also a fantasy fan from an early age, she often wished those wondrous stories had just a bit more kissing. Now she writes stories with a romantic heart set against a magical backdrop, creating the kind of book she most likes to read.

When not lost in worlds of her own creation, she resides in the Pacific Northwest with her husband, three children and a menagerie of pets.

Jaycee is a Golden Heart® finalist and author of the Hands of Destin series. The award winning first book in that series, Taxing Courtship, released in June 2018. The final book in that series, Crowning Courtship, came out in May 2021.

Learn more about her around the web:

• Website: www.jayceejarvis.com
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/JayceeJarvis
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AuthorJayceeJarvis
• Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/18092674.Jaycee_Jarvis
• BookBub: https://www.bookbub.com/profile/jaycee-jarvis