What's the point of reading a book if not to fall in love with the characters?
Sometimes, they're more real, even, than real people, and books provide a magical, almost first-hand experience of their hearts, minds, and souls, something that real life never does. Characters are what make a good book, and the rest is just the spacetime required for them to come to life and for us, readers, to be interested in meeting them.
Of course, this attachment leads to pain, cause authors have, well, author syndrome.
Here's a poem about that, one I occasionally feel compelled to quote when discussing books (and reflecting on the plot of my own personal project): https://vocal.media/poets/one-sided-dfif0n3r
