Heroine Complex by Sarah Kuhn

I jumped into reading Heroine Complex not really knowing what to expect. It seemed like it would be silly and fun – and there was plenty of that. (Demon cupcakes start out the story.) What surprised me, though, was the amount of depth in the characters that came along with it.

The story stars Evie, a young woman who’s acting as personal assistant to her childhood friend and current superheroine, Aveda Jupiter (formerly known as Annie). The story has a lot of focus on the power of social media to a public persona, and Aveda’s gotten rather obsessed with her image as a result. In the opening scene, Evie is live-streaming Aveda fighting the evil demon cupcakes who have appeared from the portal to the Otherworld that spits them out periodically. The demons are not always cupcakes – they imprint on whatever’s closest to them when the portal opens and take that form. In this particular attack, it was a bakery. They add fangs and claws, though, of course.

Evie is someone who’s had quite a bit of emotional turmoil in her life, and has learned to lock down her emotions, and control her responses and keep everything around her as stable and organized as possible. Aveda’s brand of crazy might seem at odds with that, but it’s a brand of crazy that Evie grew up with and is used to, and knows how to handle.

The problem comes when Aveda badly sprains her ankle, and is no longer able to make her public appearances while it’s healing. As a result, Evie ends up (with the help of magic) taking on the image of Aveda and covering for her, which brings on a whole host of other issues.

I can’t talk about this book without talking about how human and real this book is. It features half a dozen women who are capable and talented in their own separate ways, and this includes the villains. The two male secondary characters are capable too, but in many ways they end up playing the emotional support that you’d usually find female characters taking on in male superhero stories. Evie and Aveda are also both Asian-American – in a genre that’s filled with mostly male, white superheroes, it was great to read a story that focused on things that are usually completely ignored.

That’s not to say that our heroines are perfect – far from it. Aveda has an obsession with striving for perfection and control of everything around her. Evie struggles with severe anxiety about what happens in her life, with good reason. Even her sister, Bea, acts out in a realistic way because of her situation. Lucy, the personal trainer/weapons expert/occasional bodyguard, struggles with her love life (and thank you, Sarah Kuhn, for an lgbt character where she’s a person and not a label) and taking care of Aveda and Evie, making sure they have a way to defend themselves and fight the demons that come through the portals without getting themselves killed.

This results in a story with real, human emotions and interactions. A story filled with genuine relationships and all of the mess that implies. As much as the characters conflict with each other, they have each other’s backs, even when they don’t get along. And there’s the occasional freaking adorable moment that you can’t help but smile at, along with plenty of humor.

In case you can’t tell, I loved this book, and am looking forward to the next two in the author’s trilogy to come out. Heroine Complex is Available July 5, 2016.

 

 

Disclaimer: I was given a digital advanced copy of this book from publishers registered with NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.