Lurlene McDaniel

A Young Adult author who got her start in 1985, writing books about children with cancer, congenital illnesses or other disabilities in order to cope with her three-year-old son being diagnosed with diabetes. Her stories can basically be considered Hallmark movies in literary form: sad, gooey, shmaltzy, loaded with Glurge and big on wholesome values like family and chaste romances between teenagers. They're a Guilty Pleasure for a lot of adult women who read them as teenagers.

She's also written a few books for a more adult audience, dealing with sex, infidelity, unplanned pregnancies, rape, and abuse. These veer more into Lifetime movie territory.

Lurlene McDaniel's works contain examples of:

• Acceptable Targets: Lurlene is not known for portraying rich people (with the exception of Meg in Let Him Live) or working mothers in a positive light. Her portrayal of overweight characters is rather condescending, too; the ones who aren't portrayed as annoying are referred to by the narrative as "pleasant" despite this obvious flaw.
• All Girls Like Ponies:
  • Anne Wingate of Sixteen and Dying uses her One Last Wish money to visit a dude ranch and do some riding.
  • Shannon Campbell of When Happily Ever After Ends.
  • Mandy Underwood of A Horse for Mandy.
  • Ciana, Arie, and Lani of the Windemere books.

• All Girls Want Bad Boys: Kara in A Time to Die has two boys in her life: her faithful best friend and fellow cystic fibrosis sufferer Vince and her therapist's brother Eric, who's brooding and angsty. Kara is in love with Eric and only sees Vince as a brother.
• All Love Is Unrequited: Chelsea James from the One Last Wish series falls for two boys and wins over neither of them. Eric says she's "not his type" while D.J. can't get over the fact that his sister and Chelsea's friend Jillian died due to Chelsea getting the heart transplant that would have saved Jillian. Averted in the last book of the OLW series, when Eric does ask her on a date near the end. It's not said whether they actually get together, though.
• All Women Are Prudes: Ryan's female friend Honey in Prey comes off as this, chastising their attractive female teacher for not covering herself more, and tells the protagonist she doesn't approve of him having sex with anyone. Part of this may come from Honey having feelings for Ryan and being upset that he doesn't return them.
• Beta Couple: Alana and her boyfriend Clark are this to Meg and Donovan in Let Him Live.
• Break the Cutie: Dawn Rochelle.
• Billy Needs an Organ:
  • In Let Him Live, the heroine befriends and falls in love with a boy who desperately needs a liver transplant. He doesn't make it.
  • She Died Too Young has the complication of a heart being available, but two girls needing a transplant. The heroine of that particular book gets the heart while the other girl dies.
  • Katie O'Roark gets a heart transplant in her debut book. She survives to the end of the One Last Wish series and gets married to her longtime boyfriend.
  • The titular Jessica in Saving Jessica, with her boyfriend Ryan wanting to be the one to give her a kidney. He goes through a huge fight with his parents over his right to do so, even dealing with lawyers and his father's sabotage of his attempts to become emancipated just so he can make the choice himself. In the end, though, his parents relent and he's able to save Jessica's life.
  • The short story "Laura's Heart" has heroine Laura receive the heart of a boy she fell in love with, who was gunned down. He had a feeling his death was imminent, as he'd escaped a gang, and signed the donor forms in advance.

• Broken Bird:
  • Sloan Quentin, later Sloan Gabriel, is this in the Losing Gabriel/Somebody's Baby duology.
  • Eden in The Year of Luminous Love/The Year of Chasing Dreams
• The Chew Toy: Even for a McDaniel heroine, Dawn Rochelle suffers quite a bit. Her leukemia comes back twice, and in the final book she has a stroke as a result of all the chemotherapy. She survives, though.
• Clingy Jealous Girl:
  • In The Girl Death Left Behind, Terri has a huge crush on Jared and gets angry when he pays attention to Beth.
  • Used twice in Prey. Honey's hatred for Lori Settles is based on the fact that Ryan finds her pretty, and she gets angry anytime he mentions or spends time with her. Though when she discovers Ryan's affair with Lori her jealousy is pushed aside in favor of seeking justice for Ryan, who's clearly being taken advantage of. Lori herself is this trope when she spies Honey and Ryan at a dance together, and throws a fit when he mentions wanting to spend more time with his friends.
• Collateral Angst: Mourning Song, Goodbye Doesn't Mean Forever, and Don't Die, My Love give the main focus to the relative, friend or boyfriend/girlfriend of the dying character and how the character's condition is affecting them.
• Daddy's Girl: Shannon Campbell in When Happily Ever After Ends, Katie O'Roark in Someone Dies, Someone Lives.
• Defiled Forever: Ruth from Angel of Hope was gang raped as a pre-teen when Ugandan soldiers invaded her Rwanda village. She laments to Amber that they took the gift she wanted to save for her soon-to-be husband, but Amber gently tells her that doesn't matter because she has so much more to offer him. Most importantly, love.
• Designated Villain Has A Point: The faculty in Prey gets on Lori Settles's case for her sexy clothing, and while it carries whiffs of Slut-Shaming and "good women cover their bodies", there's a valid point: teachers are often advised to make sure the students pay attention to the lessons and not to their clothes, sexy or outlandish or otherwise. Plus, Lori is a sexual predator who was using her attractive body to lure in Ryan.
• Driven to Suicide:
  • The basis of When Happily Ever After Ends; Shannon Campbell's father kills himself due to his lingering PTSD. It takes Shannon and her mother nearly the whole rest of the book to start healing from it.
  • It's revealed that Ryan's mother in Prey killed herself due to severe depression when he was two. Unfortunately, this is treated as little more than a footnote at the end of the story.

• Fix Fic: Many a story based on the Angels trilogy will find a way to bring Ethan and Leah back together for good.
• Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling:
  • Amy and Erin Bennett in the End of Forever duology. Amy is a wild, disorganized social butterfly while Erin is neat, orderly, and tries to keep her sister in check.
  • Heather and Amber Barlow from Angel of Mercy/Angel of Hope. Heather is idealistic but very responsible, while Amber is a party girl who cares more about shopping and boys than homework. Angel of Hope has them moving away from this when Heather becomes terminally ill, and Amber impulsively volunteers to take her place on a goodwill trip to Africa. Amber learns a lot about the world beyond her upbringing and comes home feeling completely detached from her old life.

• Foregone Conclusion: The majority of the One Last Wish books have the focal character die near the end.
• Gratuitous Rape as Backstory: The third book in the Angels trilogy makes a mention of how a few of Leah's past stepfathers were "overly friendly." It doesn't say rape outright, but this reviewer couldn't help assuming the worst given the reputation of stepfathers in the YA world.
• The Glorious War of Sisterly Rivalry: Erin and Amy in the duology Somewhere Between Life and Death and Time To Let Go.
• Hollywood Postpartum:
  • It's implied this was the reason Ryan's mother killed herself in Prey.
  • Sloan Quentin suffers this after giving birth to the titular Gabriel in Losing Gabriel, running away from him and the baby's father.
  • Desi's mother in Baby Alicia is Dying more or less invoked the trope with baby Desi: after losing her second child to SIDS, she didn't want to get attached to Desi in case she died, too.

• Hot Teacher: Deconstructed with Lori Settles in Prey. She uses her good looks to lure in teenage protagonist Ryan and trap him in a sexual relationship.

• I Just Want to Be Normal: Lacey in All The Days of Her Life.
  • Rachel Deering in the book Last Dance, except she knows she can't be so she throws herself headlong into an endless pity party, refusing to accept that her life has changed. She's called out half a dozen times before she eventually does.
• Ill Girl and Ill Boy: The basic bread and butter of these books.
• It's All About Me: Cassie and Dani's mother in Mourning Song comes across as this in the beginning, refusing to tell Cassie she's dying and keeping her cooped up in the hospital because it makes her feel safe with little regard to the wishes of her sick daughter.
• Law of Inverse Fertility: Sarah MacGregor's parents adopted her after trying and failing to conceive, and later managed to have two biological children without trying.
• Living Emotional Crutch: Used ironically in Don't Die, My Love. It's Luke who's dangerously ill with Hodgkins' Lymphoma, but his girlfriend Julie's the one clinging to him and their relationship as her only reason for living. When Luke dies, Julie completely shuts down from her grief and only begins to come out of it when she sees the football field decorated with an "I Love You" spelled out in tulips that Luke planted ages ago.
• Love Triangle:
  • Between Lacey, Amanda and Jeff in Please Don't Die. Lacey steps aside for Amanda's sake, but when Amanda dies, she and Jeff eventually gravitate towards each other.
  • Sloan, Dawson and Lani in Losing Gabriel. Lani has a crush on Dawson who doesn't know she's alive, and he has the hots for Sloan. When Sloan catches her boyfriend cheating on her she runs into Dawson's arms, leading to a Teen Pregnancy and Sloan leaving after the baby's born. After the Time Skip, Lani takes a job as the baby's caretaker and Dawson ends up drawn to her despite his history with Sloan. In the end, Dawson and Lani get together while Sloan leaves to find herself.
  • There's one between Arie, Cianna, and Jon in The Year of Luminous Love. Cianna has feelings for Jon but steps aside with a heavy heart when she learns her friend Arie is in love with him. Though Arie ultimately dies of cancer, leaving Jon and Cianna to get together.
• Maybe Ever After: Sloan and Cole in Somebody's Baby.
• The Mourning After: Richard Holloway. Marian Crawford notes it's a shame he never married, and it's clear Richard can't bring himself to love after losing Jenny.
• My Beloved Smother: Nathan's mother in Letting Go of Lisa homeschooled him for years before finally letting him go to public high school. It turns out she's this way because Nathan's older sister drowned in the pool when she was little.
• Oblivious Adoption: Sarah MacGregor in Mother, Help Me Live didn't even know she was adopted until she needed a bone marrow transplant and neither of her siblings were matches. She goes into a Heroic BSoD and uses her One Last Wish money to search for her birth mother, who rejects her and can't donate her marrow anyway due to having had breast cancer. This is all to teach An Aesop about real families being formed through love and caring rather than just blood.
• No One Gets Left Behind: In Angel of Hope, Amber refuses to leave a handicapped little girl behind while the group she's staying with in Africa is hunted down by enemy soldiers during the Rwanda-Uganda civil war. Later, her love interest Boyce says these exact words when Amber gets hurt and tells the group to leave her behind.
• Premature Baby Panic:
  • Sloan and Dawson's son Gabriel is born too early, causing him to develop lung problems and asthma. The latter ultimately claims his life when he's a toddler.
  • Brianna in Brianna's Gift is in a coma and develops an infection while pregnant, so the baby has to be delivered early.
• Rape as Backstory: Lori Settles's father sexually abused her, which is supposedly why she molests teenage boys.
  • Ruth in Angel of Hope was captured and gang-raped by members of her village's enemy tribe when she was just twelve. She's able to move past it through her own determination and Amber's reassurance, and live a happy live with her husband Patrick.
• Replacement Goldfish: Taken to new levels and deconstructed in Heart to Heart. When Ill Girl Arabeth Thompson receives Elowyn Eden's heart after she dies in a car crash, she begins to inherit some of Elowyn's stubborn nature and favorite foods alongside Elowyn's parents, best friend Kassey, and ex-boyfriend treating her like she was Elowyn reborn. It gets to the point where Arabeth's mother forbids her from spending any more time with the Edens, and Kassey is forced to decide whether she likes Arabeth for herself or as the apparent reincarnation of her dead friend.
• Rich Bitch: Lurlene McDaniel seems to have a hate-on for rich people. One reviewer was shocked when Meg from Let Him Live was portrayed as sympathetic and likeable despite coming from a rich family. Jory also averts this in the Always and Forever duology.
• Second Love: Meg Charnell forms a romance with the dying Donovan Jacoby in Let Him Live and Morgan Lancaster falls in love with HIV sufferer Anne Wingate in Sixteen and Dying, only for the inevitable to happen. In the final One Last Wish installment Reach For Tomorrow, they meet at the Jenny House, bond over their losses and slowly fall in love with each other.
• Shipper on Deck:
  • Everyone at the Jenny House in the One Last Wish series is this for Katie and Josh.
    • Lacey is this for Amanda and Jeff, despite her own feelings for Jeff. When Amanda dies, everyone eventually becomes this for Jeff and Lacey.
  • Melissa from the Always and Forever duology ships her best friend Jory with her brother Michael
  • Jillian from She Died Too Young ships Chelsea with her brother DJ
  • Alexis from The Time Capsule ships her best friend Tessa with her twin brother Adam.
  • Alana and her boyfriend in Let Him Live ship Megan and Donovan quite hard.
  • Beth in The Girl Death Left Behind supports her friends Marcie and Teddy hooking up and is glad when they do.
• Shipping Torpedo: Marian Crawford in The Legacy: Making Wishes Come True spends most of the book trying to keep Jenny and Richard apart, wanting Jenny to marry a fine rich man and thinking Richard's too old for her. She finally relents near the end when Jenny's dying, and accepts that even if Richard isn't the man she wanted for her granddaughter, Jenny loves him more than anything.
  • The Shipper on Deck examples Jillian, Alexis, and Melissa are this for their brothers and their current girlfriends. Alexis is even validated when Adam confesses on his deathbed that he should have been with Tessa all along.
• Shoot the Shaggy Dog: Sarah from Mother, Help Me Live. She tracks down her birth mother Janelle to ask her to be a bone marrow donor, but Janelle had breast cancer so she's ineligible. Later, she does get the transplant and live a few more years only to die when her cancer comes back in the grand finale of "One Last Wish".
• Sibling Triangle: In the How Do I Love Thee installment "Bobby's Girl", heroine Dana dated Steve Harrod one summer and sometime later got together with his brother Bobby. This raises panic in her when Steve visits after she hadn't expected to see him again, and she finds her old feelings for him returning despite loving Bobby.
• Stalking Is Love:
  • David in Time To Let Go follows Erin around constantly despite her protests, and she ends up dating him.
  • Nathan, the protagonist of Letting Go of Lisa does this with the titular Lisa, following her and swearing he'll break through her walls and make her love him and even saying he has the right to follow her to the hospital because he loves her.
  • Downplayed with Brett and Shayla in How Do I Love Thee's "Night Visions". He does seek her out and drive by her house a few times, but she has no major objections aside from wondering why he's so interested. Brett is very cool and low-key about having been captivated by her when they first met, and they develop a friendship when Shayla feels comfortable enough to explain why she only comes out at night and avoids people.

• Star-Crossed Lovers: A non-death example is Leah and Ethan from the Angels trilogy. They fall in love, but he can't bring himself to abandon his family in the Amish country. He leaves Leah with the promise that she'll be in his heart "until angels close his eyes."
• Stay in the Kitchen: Quite a few of Lurlene's books have it out for working mothers:
  • Carrie's mother in Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep is portrayed as selfish for wanting to focus on her job, while her stepmother Lynda is a good mother because she stays home with her family.
  • Alexis and Adam's parents in The Time Capsule both work, and Alexis resents her mother for spending too much time at her job.
  • Andrea's father in Sometimes Love Just Isn't Enough has this attitude and yells at his wife that she is not allowed to get a job. She does, and they end up divorcing. Luckily, in this case the husband is portrayed as in the wrong for his selfish sexism.
  • Leah in the Angels trilogy complains that she and her mother never felt like a real family because her mother worked. Considering Leah's father left them and then died and her mother had to work to support them, Leah's complaint reads as petty and selfish.
  • Inverted in Let Him Live, where Meg is resentful of her father's job keeping him away from his family.
  • Also inverted in The Girl Death Left Behind, where Beth's aunt and uncle were on the verge of divorce until her uncle cut back his work hours and started taking fewer business trips.

• Sour Prudes: The faculty and Honey Fowler in Prey are treated like this for objecting to Lori Settles's wardrobe, but their concern is justified due to Lori being a sexual predator who's using her body to lure in Ryan.
• Survivor Guilt: The premise of The Girl Death Left Behind. Beth's family dies in a car wreck (on the 4th of July, no less) and it takes her most of the book to get over it.
• Teacher/Student Romance: Deconstructed in Prey, one of Lurlene's only books not to deal with disease or death. Or so you'd think, except the teacher and student are implied to get back together in the end even after all the trauma.
• Teen Pregnancy:
  • The titular Kathy of the short story "Kathy's Life" in Starry Starry Night. The heroine of the story learns her classmate went through this when she discovers that the baby she takes care of is actually Kathy's son, whom she's giving up for adoption to the parents.
  • The focus of Brianna's Gift, only the pregnant Brianna suffers an aneurysm and winds up on life support until the baby is ready to be born, and her mother and younger sister take the baby home to raise at the end of the book.
  • Sloan Quentin has one in Losing Gabriel, ends up delivering the titular Gabriel two months early and runs away, leaving her boyfriend Dawson and his widowed father to raise the baby and hire a caretaker.

• Third Act Misunderstanding: A rather stupid one between Ciana and Jon in The Year of Chasing Dreams. The two learn that due to an incident in their family's shared past, they might be related by blood. Ciana runs away from him, and Jon is the one who has to run to her begging her to come back even after it's proven they don't share any DNA.
• Threesome Subtext: It's easy to glean this in A Time to Die. Kara loves Eric, but Vince is also very important to her, and Vince and Eric slowly develop a friendship over time. The three even go to the mall together once Kara is well enough to leave the hospital.
• Time Travel Romance: Reaching Through Time has three of these. One is actually All Just a Dream, the second ends in Lurlene-style tragedy, and the third has the heroine sacrifice her own happiness for the sake of the boy she loves.

• Too Good For This Sinful Earth:
  • Rebekah, the innocent little sister of Leah's love interest Ethan in the Angels trilogy. She instantly befriends Leah in the hospital, gives her a baby chick as a present when she comes to visit the Amish country, and is an all-around sweet, loving child. She gets hit by a car and dies.
  • Baby Gabriel in Losing Gabriel. He's born prematurely, suffers from asthma all his life, and dies from a serious attack after playing in a hayloft.

• Tropical Epilogue: April and her family in Till Death Do Us Part go on vacation to the Virgin Islands at the end of the story, while April copes with her boyfriend Mark's death.
• The Unfavorite:
  • Desilia "Desi" in Baby Alicia is Dying until the end when she and her mother patch things up.
  • Bobby Harrod in the "Bobby's Girl" installment of How Do I Love Thee. His father doesn't care about him or his passions and blatantly dotes on Bobby's half brother Steve.
  • Erin in the End of Forever duology feels like this, thinking their parents always let Amy have her way and that her mother calling her "the dependable one" is an insult rather than a compliment. She feels this way to the point where she's happy when she hears their father grounding Amy for slacking off on her schoolwork.
  • Amber feels like this in the Angel of... duology because Heather is always working so hard while she's a typical teenager. It goes away in the second book when she undergoes some harsh trials and is shown that her parents do love her just the same.

• When You Coming Home, Dad?: Meg Charnell's father is a doctor and she initially resents his being gone all the time. Later, she changes her mind as she becomes involved with Donovan Jacoby and starts doing her own share of work for the hospital.
• White Man's Burden: The basic premise of Baby Alicia is Dying.
  • Played with in Angel of Mercy and Angel of Hope. The white protagonists do go to Africa to help the less fortunate, but Heather had been into activism and charity causes since she was a child and going to Africa had been a lifelong dream. Amber, meanwhile, goes on a whim out of boredom and winds up forming a bond with a fellow missionary and a young woman from Rwanda. Heather has to learn that idealism can't save every life, while Amber develops a greater understanding of life beyond her privileged experience.
• Would Hit a Girl: Tony Columbo in one of Lurlene's non-cancer books, Sometimes Love Just Isn't Enough starts out the story shoving heroine Andrea Manetti around quite a bit. They eventually become friends, though, and it turns out his own dad smacks him around.
• You're Not My Parents: Sarah in Mother, Help Me Live keeps saying and thinking this about her adoptive parents, even after they call her out on her nasty treatment of the family once she learns she's adopted.