Heroine’s Journey and Haunted Heroine are the third and fourth books in Sarah Kuhn’s fun ‘Heroine’ series. Demons breached our dimension and some humans gained powers as a result. Set in present day San Francisco and surrounding areas, Aveda Jupiter and her best friend Evie Tanaka have become the superheroine darlings of the city. Aveda’s telekinesis combined with fighting prowess and Evie’s ability to create and throw fire have made them a fantastic duo. The road to get there has been rough as they each had to come to peace with their past and work hard at having a healthy friendship, and along the way they each found true love. An important part of their friendship is a mutual love of a Chinese action film called the Heroine Trio and with Heroine’s Journey, the heroine trio of Aveda, Evie, and Bea is complete.
Heroine’s Journey is Bea Tanaka’s book. Bea has had a tumultuous life. Her mother died at the age of twelve and shortly thereafter her father went off on a personal spiritual journey, leaving Bea to be raised by her ten year older sister, Evie. Bea is incredibly intelligent and perhaps ADHD with her ability to become laser focused at odds with a wandering attention span. She has a superpower of her own, the ability to influence a person’s emotions. Bea has been wanting to step up and become a full time superhero with Evie and Aveda but Evie feels that she isn’t ready yet, often citing her lack of commitment to anything. Bea is desperate to prove herself and after helping with a demon incursion is granted trainee status. What she didn’t expect was how boring and mundane superhero work was the majority of the time. It doesn’t take long for it to become exciting when Bea starts to have encounters with her dead mother.
The sisters have much they need to work through from their mutually traumatic past. I feel for Bea, she has a big heart that she wears on her sleeve and can often be swept up in her emotions. She is trying to figure herself out and her place in the world, while navigating a friendship that is quickly rushing into a romantic relationship.
I didn’t prefer Heroine’s Journey quite as much as the first two books because Bea is a handful of a character. I found her exhausting at times, making me sympathetic with Evie. But overall I did enjoy the book and how the challenges are changing due to the advancement of the demons and the thinning of the walls between the human and demon realms.
Haunted Heroine brings the point of view back around to Evie, who is in the early stages of pregnancy and feeling completely smothered by everyone at superhero HQ. Evie’s perpetually feeling of having badly raised Bea has her tormented by self doubt about becoming a parent, as she alternates between being ecstatic and terrified. Her half-demon husband, Nate, is worried about the supernatural nature of their baby, as it’s the first demon/superhero hybrid and how that might affect Evie and the baby. When a random invite to an event for alumni of Morgan College, where Evie attending before dropping out to care for Bea full time, arrives Evie sees it as an opportunity to get away for a bit. Aveda invites herself along as a plus one to watch over Evie and a chance for them to recapture a college experience neither properly had.
Morgan College is an old female only institution and has its share of ghosts that haunt its campus. However, what had previously only been benign spectral encounters has turned into scary physical altercations. This leads to some interesting questions, what has changed to cause the ghosts to physically manifest? Have demons found a way to merge with supernatural energy? But it’s not just the strange that Evie needs to navigate, it’s dealing with her messy past with Richard, the professor she had an inappropriate relationship with when she was a grad student. And the person that caused rage to overwhelm her, resulting in a loss of control and the burning down of the college library. All while embracing college experiences she hadn’t been able to enjoy the first time around.
This is a strange one, the ghost story aspect in particular. Evie is emotionally all over the place, bouncing between confident heroine to a crying mess as she doubts herself, which is the result of pregnancy hormones jerking her around. The pregnancy felt plot device-ish. Evie starts off with severe nausea issues and needing to nap multiple times a day but that seems to completely clear up once she’s at Morgan. Maybe I’m especially sensitive having had two children. I did not care for the distance between her and Nate. They already spent a book separate and coming together at the end, I didn’t expect to go through that arc again.
Did I still have fun? Yes. Am I going to read the next book to see where this goes? Yes. I’ve grown quite fond of the characters and watching them grow and mature. I like how Kuhn continues to develop her world from the initial premise.