“Lying is wrong. When you tell a lie for the sake of sparing someone’s feelings it is not suddenly right, but it is compassionate. And is not compassion a form of love? Love—the greatest of all virtues! So, my darling, I do wrong for you; I lie that you might feel loved.” – Richelle E. Goodrich
Author: Katey Hawthorne
Publisher: Loose Id
Pages/Word Count: 206 Pages
Rating: 4 Stars
Blurb: Jamie Monday lives in two different worlds.
With his family, he’s the golden child of awakened superpowered society. He’s meant to do Great Things and pass on his powers — with the appropriate girl, hand-picked by his mother. He’s already failed at the former, so he can’t bring himself to tell her that the latter isn’t happening, either. With his friends, he’s the social director and life of the party. He’s also an out gay man with an appetite for the quick and easy lay. It’s tough to have a relationship when you’re hiding off-the-charts electrical powers, but Jamie doesn’t mind.
Not until the prickly, paddy rocking, geeky-hot new guy at work shows him what he’s been missing, anyhow. Kellan Shea’s singular combination of dirty mouth and pure soul makes Jamie spark right from the beginning. To break through Kelly’s defensive front and get to the gentle heart inside, Jamie will have to reconcile his split life: come to terms with his past, his family, his powers, even his nightmares.
Easier said than done, but if Jamie doesn’t step up and own the truth, he could lose his love before it gets off the ground.
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Review: Guilty pleasures are things we are so often ashamed of—things we keep locked away and take out only every so often to examine, but never too closely, as that would cause the illusion that we truly don’t like our little secrets to shatter. Rather, It would reveal to us just how much we loved that little something about ourselves and then we would be faced with the truth of how despicable we really are. Jamie Monday has a guilty pleasure—it is his power, and what a power it is. With an electrical force so strong that he can act as a human defibrillator, Jamie is a prince among the awakened. Every girl’s dream husband, Jamie is a deeply closeted gay man to his family, while openly gay to his friends.
He carefully keeps his two worlds from colliding until he meets the new guy at work, Kellen O’Shea. Immediately smitten, Jamie begins this incredible dance on the tightrope that exists between his two worlds, and quickly realizes that if he is to keep the man he loves in his life, the wall he has erected around himself must come crumbling down. But once built, barriers are hard to demolish, and Jamie may end up losing everything if he does not come out of the shadows once and for all.
If you have been following my dance with author Katey Hawthorne this week, then you know this is the third novel in her Superpowered Love series, Nobody’s Hero. In the first two reviews I have remarked upon this author’s gift of creating three-dimensional characters that think and feel and are so achingly real, just like you and me. I have also mentioned how amazing it is that Ms. Hawthorne uses the more intimate love scenes she crafts as a chance to slow down her novel and reveal even more about the inner thoughts of her men.
As with the last two novels in this series, a bit more is revealed about this world where the “awakened” (those with extraordinary gifts) exist alongside the “sleepers” (normal human beings). However, this world is really not the focus of these stories; instead, it is relationships and their development that is the main component. While I love this, I also find it a bit frustrating to only get snippets about the awakened and find myself, by this the third novel, wishing we could know more about where this race of people come from and how they have managed to remain hidden from society for so long. I had hoped by now that more would be revealed about the awakened, and I must admit that I feel this keeps the series from evolving as fully as it could.
Thankfully this minor issue does not greatly impact this latest installment, where another strength is revealed about this delightful author and her gifted storytelling abilities, and that would be the development of her snarky and lovely tongue-in-cheek sense of humor. The author allows us to glimpse her wicked comedic timing each second Jamie and Kellen interact with one another. Their witty repartee with each other and that delicious layer of sarcasm overall leaves you quietly chuckling so very often throughout this novel. The timing is impeccable and the switch from the sublime to the serious is smooth and often heart wrenching as we watch Jamie begin to understand how he uses his humor as a means to place another brick in the wall around his heart.
With each subsequent story in this series, more and more of author Katey Hawthorne’s talent as an entertaining storyteller is revealed. My one criticism is also my one hope, that in the next installment we discover much more about this superpowered race of people and their past.
You can buy Nobody’s Hero here:
