Reviews - Heroine's Journey

73 reviews for:

The books in this series are ridiculous fun, honestly. I'm not usually a big fan of candylike paranormal romance, but these are fresh, wonderful, and packed with women in central roles with men assigned to the supportive secondary roles, a thing I first noted in Heroine Complex (and was pointedly not mad about). Bea is focused on her own life, her own goals and is beautifully flawed. Kuhn is not squeamish about Bea being unreasonable or sexy

Spoiler

(the showerhead, lol)

or happy or in love with her best friends and both adoring and dismissive of her sister who in turn adores and (sometimes fairly, sometimes othrerwise) treats her like an angry, irresponsible emo kid. I love this reality, even as I find some of the setup a little implausible.

As a bonus, I had to promise to tell my six-year-old why Aveda is punching out a unicorn on the cover as soon as I knew, and she was very impressed by Bea and Pancake.

Not high art, but fun, female-driven urban fantasy.

jessica_lam's review

1.0

fast-paced

Let me be clear - if New York were to be attacked by a demons from another world, I'm rather bow down to our new demonic overlords than be saved by Beatrice Tanaka. I don't think I've ever loathed a protagonist more. I sped through the second half of this book because I have several genuinely good books waiting on the side and I was so certain that I would never come back to it if detoured because I really didn't want to spend more time with this character. Imagine my joy at the end that indicates her presence will be reduced in future books.

Quickly scrolling through the reviews, it seems like people enjoy this so if you do, don't read this because it'll probably hurt your feelings.

I think I just have no idea who this book is for. The explicit, though extremely cheesy sex scenes punt this way out of the young adults category and in theory, Bea is in her early 20s but acts like a 14 year old at best. Zero thoughts about consequences, compassion, considerations for other people, which the other justifies through her internal monologue, which frankly pisses me off some more. There are plenty of people, including her own sister, who goes through trauma, but it's such a poor reason to treat people who love you so terribly. She completely lacks any foresight, integrity, and multiple characters point out her villainous habit of mind control and taking away people's free will, which she justifies through pages worth of tantrum monologues. Her response to the line about Asian women with dyed hair stereotype is so trite, especially as she has so few characteristics to speak of other than bratty and rebellious just for the sake of it, that it made me actively roll my eyes and feel offended as an Asian woman who had gone through her own dyed hair phases. And then having the supposedly highly educated writer say that her response was articulate also made me want to die.

It's extremely rare I think that I give 1 star on any book, but we did it, kids.

delaneybull's review

5.0

I always like the love stories in this series, but I wish the Aveda and Evie didn't fall into their stereotypes so easily before the big emotional scene where they all mature together.

nelsonseye's review

4.0

Heroine's Journey was a good close to what I think is the first trilogy in the Heroine Complex series. Bea was another strong narrator and I liked seeing things from her perspective. I also liked her relationships with Sam, Leah, and Nicole. Pancake, of course, was also a great character. The "boss battle" was well done, and I think the author made a good choice with how to end things. I'm looking forward to reading more of her work.