Anna's Reviews > Hero

“Hero” by Claire Kent

3.5⭐️/5⭐️
3🌶/5🌶

Rounded up to 4 stars on Goodreads:

“I’ve never once considered fucking him, and I’m quite sure he feels the same about me. He was probably just trying to distract me. Throw me off my game and out of my anxiety spiral. But now that I’m thinking about fucking him, I can’t think about anything else.”

Zed and Esther are stuck living in a remote cabin with Zed’s four year old daughter, Rina. After the Impact event, Esther moved into her step-father’s cabin with numerous family members, including his younger brother Zed. Now everyone else has died, and Zed and Esther are forced to establish an amicable relationship. However, the close proximity and isolation has started to affect Esther’s opinion of Zed. One night they both make a decision that changes everything; there’s no going back from what they did. And while their relationship changes, there are more complications: food is running scarce, and they need to decide if they will leave their cabin in the hopes of finding civilization.

-I feel so mixed about this novella. I’m going to just dive in, here are the things that I enjoyed:

-I enjoy having the mix of full length novels and short novellas in the “Kindled” series. “Haven”, the other novella in the series, is a favorite of mine. In terms of comparing “Hero” to the other books in the series, it’s about in the middle.

-I like reading about the progression of society building itself back together. The newly established Halbrook community was mentioned in “Embers”, so it’s nice to return to the town and learn a little bit more about how people live and work in that environment.

-Zed felt different from the other MCs in the series. He’s not an alpha type of guy, which was really refreshing. He’s a father to a little girl, and he’s trying his hardest to hold everything together. At the beginning of the Impact he was just a guy who got his casual girlfriend pregnant, he enjoyed drinking beer and watching sports. Yes, he wanted a family eventually, but he wasn’t ready to intentionally make those choices. He was very down-to-Earth, and as a fellow parent of a young child, I found him to be relatable in many respects.

-It was nice to read about a complex living situation. In prior books you did have some complicated relationships, Cal was the father of Rachel’s boyfriend, Grant was an employee of Olivia’s father. But there’s nothing like adding a child to the equation, especially when one person isn’t the child’s parent.

-The spice between Zed and Esther felt unique to their relationship. A big qualm I have with prior books in the series is that Claire Kent will often reuse lines from previous books, which negatively affects the plot and takes me out of the story; when I read those lines it just makes me remember that I’ve read them before in previous books. However, I didn’t see any of that in this story, and it was very welcomed.

-Here are the things I didn’t like:

-Esther’s personality wasn’t terribly different from Rachel, Olivia, and even Layne. I think the novella format wasn’t very effective for her character development. While I love reading about a FMC that struggles with anxiety (I’m very empathetic towards those characters), by the end of the story I didn’t feel like I totally understood Esther.

-I understand Noelle Adams/Claire Kent had to switch things up with her publication schedule, and that “Hero” was always intended to be the title for Mack and Anna’s book. However, I don’t think the title worked for Zed and Esther. I could see various lines where the word ‘hero’ is intentionally added to try to tie the title to the plot, but I don’t think the connection was very strong. I suppose the definition of a hero means something different to everyone, so I understand if others disagree. I also don’t hold it against the author at all, I understand she was in a bit of a bind with the title.

-After Zed and Esther hook up she starts to make all kinds of negative assumptions about his feelings towards her, which results in some very typical miscommunication. I really get tired of that trope, and it would be nice to see more authors move away from utilizing it in the third act for unnecessary conflict. Also, Zed states at one point that he’s been in love with Esther for two years. I was shocked when I read that, because his feelings aren’t clear whatsoever until late in the story. It’s very ambiguous, and if he truly loved her I wish there were more clear signs pointing to that. I guess this could partially be due to the story being a single POV, and Esther’s anxiety clouding her judgment of Zed’s feelings.

-Overall, this was ok. It wasn’t the worst book in the series, but it wasn’t the best. I’m interested in the next book and who it will focus on, and I’m especially looking forward to Mack and Anna’s story; they’ve been teased since the first book, I want to read their romance!