Dear Hero by Hope Bolinger and Alyssa Roat

Cortex and V need a new nemesis. Cortex's last villain dumped him, and V got a little overeager and took out her hero prematurely. They meet on Meta-Match, a nemesis pairing site for heroes and villains. After throwing punches at each other behind coffee shops and hiring henchman to do their bidding (mostly just getting them coffee), they realize they have a lot more in common than meets the eye. And they may have a lot more hero and villain inside than they realize.

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A book that's very hard to define.

Let's start with the positives. It's a really creative, clever way to write things, and the over all story is good. A couple of twists were clever; I saw one coming, though they hadn't really tried to hide it, and the other completely blindsided me. Himari is absolutely my favourite character, closely followed by Bernard. I'd love to know if the authors knew where they were going, or if they literally sent messages at each other until they reached the end. I like to pretend it was the second one.

However. This novel, as you know if you've read any reviews but isn't mentioned in the blurb, is written entirely in text messages sent between various people. In my ARC copy, there was no difference in text or background colour or anything to show which group chat you were in, so I kept getting confused and having to go back and recheck. That may be different in the finished copy, though. It also means there's basically no worldbuilding, because no one inserts explanations of the world in their texts, and it's hard to feel urgent about anything. When a fight is rendered as 'They're chasing me, now I'm on the ground, now they're kicking my head' it just doesn't feel like a real fight.

This is such a clever idea. I think it would make for a great TV show, where the worldbuilding could be explained better and we wouldn't be reliant on just what's written down. As it is, though, the format just lets it down slightly, and that's really sad to see in a novel this good.


Dear Hero publishes on 28th September, 2020.