L is for — two Lucys: Lucy Pevensie and Lucy Waring from C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia and Mary Stewart’s This Rough Magic.

After reading the Chronicles of Narnia, in my much younger days, whenever I saw a wardrobe or even a closet in someone’s house, my first impulse was to open it and see if it led anywhere. I didn’t, of course, because that would have been incredibly rude, but I always wondered what it would be like to actually find a doorway to another world as Lucy Pevensie does in Lewis’ The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. I would have felt as she did: excited, curious, and more than a little scared.

Lucy is the youngest of the four Pevensie siblings, and she isn’t taken seriously by her brothers and sister at the start of the story. They don’t believe her when she tells them about Narnia, but she proves them wrong, and so begins their amazing adventure. I enjoyed the Chronicles very much and liked seeing Lucy grow into a strong, self-confident, courageous young woman.

In Mary Stewart’s romantic thriller, This Rough Magic, Lucy Waring is a young actress vacationing on the island of Corfu in the Mediterranean. Her vacation, however, goes horribly wrong when she gets caught up in a nightmare of deceit and murder. She must use all of her wits and courage to save herself from being the next one dead.

I really enjoy Stewart’s romantic suspense thrillers. One of the things that draws me in is that, not just Lucy, but all of Stewart’s heroines are ordinary women who travel to exotic locales and get tangled up in perilous situations, not of their making. The books are exciting reads with plenty of romance and, always, satisfying endings.

Georgie Henley as Lucy Pevensie
with Mr. Tumnus the Faun in
Disney’s The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, 2005
Photo Credit: Narnia Wikia

Chronicles of Narnia

Mary Stewart’s Books