I was genuinely super excited when I read the premise of this novel. I am a huge fan of superhero narratives in comic books and graphic novels. Unfortunately, I just haven’t gotten around to reading a lot of them in prose form. Pile on top of that that this is a sapphic romance, and Hero Complex was ticking a lot of my wheelhouse boxes. Regrettably, my excitement turned to utter frustration. The writing quality, especially in regards to the dialogue and relationship development, was just not there.
The romance in Hero Complex is the definition of instalust. Like, they’re just meeting and speaking with each other normally one second, and the next they’re calling each other sexy and hitting on one another with extremely cringe-worthy one-liners. It was absolutely out of nowhere. Now, this has occurred in other books and I was willing to look past it because the rest of the character dynamic felt organic, but Hero Complex was unable to achieve that due to its problematic dialogue.
I hate unnecessary exposition dumps in dialogue. There is nothing more awkward than a character stopping what they are doing to explain or mention world building elements to another character that lives and functions within that world, and should therefore know these things already. Conveying large amounts of narrative information through dialogue is too passive of a way to inform your reader. As such, it makes the story drag and makes the dialogue feel inorganic and unrealistic. This is exactly what happened in Hero Complex.
Overall, I would not recommend this.

(3.5 Stars) I’m not a big fantasy or speculative fiction reader. As I’ve never read a book about a super hero I took a leap. For the most part the story is straight forward. Bronte Scales is a genius scientists looking at bots as a way to cure cancer. Bard Verstrand wants the discoveries at all costs. Bronte destroys her own lab when Bard’s goons raid the lab and she injects herself with the lone sample of her work. Fast forward to a year later and nurse Athena Papadaki begins working in a secret section of her hospital. She finds test subjects and is surprised when one unexpectedly wakes. Working with another patient and a doctor the group needs to escape, figure out Bronte’s abilities and try to stop Bard from finding them all.

This is a fun adventure that moves a long. There is some world building and a little backstory for everyone but not a lot of details. And mundane things like getting money and finding a safe place seems like filler but are realistically important. From the ending I’m assuming the story is hopeful to continue. I’m rounding up my 3.5 stars because I like it enough and think people who read this type of fiction will enjoy it even more than I did. Thank you to NetGalley and Bold Strokes Book for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Bronte Scales has invented a medical breakthrough in cancer research and wants to share it with the world. Bard Verstrand plans to steal and contort the breakthrough to build up her empire. Nurse Athena Papadaki becomes caught up in helping Bronte and others who have fallen victim to Bard.

Thoma has created a reluctant superhero with a trio of deuteragonists who fully captures your attention. She takes her time to lay out the story which this reader truly appreciates. The science fiction aspects are explicitly descriptive to be easily envisioned and the romance has time to evolve generically.

Hero Complex on the surface is a fun and exciting read but there is a subtext of how power corrupts with our reliance on all things technological. Either way you view this novel, it is well worth adding to your list of must reads.

I received a free advance review copy from Bold Strokes Books through NetGalley. I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Hero Complex details Bronte and Athena’s adventure through new superpowers and being kidnapped by three superheroes, respectively.

In theory, I liked this book from the description and the aesthetic. The first half of the book was quite lacking, however. The pacing was really off for me; it went very fast, so fast it was almost confusing, to very slow, as in they were sitting around a warehouse for most of the book (which also made the timeline very confusing).

I feel like buildup was a very big issue for this book. There was not enough buildup in both the plot and the relationship between Bronte and Athena to make a meaningful connection with the reader. It also heavily contributed to the pacing issues.

Most of these issues thankfully improved in the last leg of the book, but the rest of the book had so many cliché and unnecessary parts that made the book hard to read for me.

I liked the switches in the point of views, but Bard’s chapters read more like exposition and plot device than legitimate chapters that made the novel better.

Overall, I liked this book, but could’ve been so much better with more action and plot. I adored the world building and the characters (aside from Galen’s creepy comments). Thank you for providing me with this ARC!

I wouldn’t consider myself a superhero fan. That being said, I am a fan of this author, and I can usually get behind anything if it’s done right. I was pretty into the plot of this book. There were some things I found lacking but progression throughout the story felt good and it was well written. The ending felt like maybe there’s an opening for the story to continue on so there was a little lack of closure when I finished. But besides that, I was pretty into. There’s some humor, some action, some romance and I found it all well written and easy to follow. And I don’t know if it was just me and maybe being distracted while reading but it felt like I was confused sometimes as to who’s POV we were “in.” Overall, worth the read.