“Hinges? I don’t know her” – Elizabeth Stephens, probably.
All Superheroes Need PR is so delightfully unhinged. Don’t mistake unhinged for thoughtless, because Elizabeth Stephens knows her craft. The characters and plot may lack hinges, but they are well structured. Vanessa owns and runs a PR company, but she resists being the face of the company because she has anxiety and PTSD. She wins a contract for her company to provide PR for the newest superhero, Roland, an alien who landed on Earth as a child and can control fire. Things immediately go wrong at Roland’s first meeting with the PR team when he looks at Vanessa and gets violently angry. For no apparent reason. Later, when she is at a bar getting drunk, he shows up, she barfs on him, and then he flies her to her parents’ house to recover. Vanessa is naturally confused by his unprovoked rejection followed by an unexpected act of care. Meeting Vanessa starts a chain reaction in Roland that brings to light a hidden threat.
I almost put the book down at Roland’s initial reaction to Vanessa. I have too much real world experience with men who lead with anger to want to spend time with that kind of anger in a love interest. But, I have seen too many reviewers I trust extolling the banana-pants virtues of Elizabeth Stephens, so I kept reading. I ended up enjoying the book more than I expected after the initial meeting between Vanessa and Roland.
One of the things I particularly liked was Vanessa as a multifaceted character. Her history as a survivor of child abuse is a significant part of her arc. She is anxious in public and around people she doesn’t know and is the brains of her company. When a character tries to break her using her past, she’s able to be like, “worse people than you have tried.” She is allowed to be soft, vulnerable, capable, and the cavalry. I really loved her family, both officially and unofficially adopted.
We get the start of what looks like a series long arc about the aliens who landed on Earth as children. I can’t wait to see how Stephens explores the aliens, who are pushed to be either “villains” or “heroes.” Roland rejects the roles that everyone else tries to impose on him, choosing Vanessa over everything. He turned out to be interesting. There were a few things he did that made me side-eye him. I’m not a huge fan of the morality chain trope, but Roland avoids a lot of what I don’t like about it by taking ownership of his actions. I’m so glad we spend time in his head.
I received this as an advance reader copy from Montlake and NetGalley. My opinions are my own, freely and honestly given.