We Could Be Heroes – Mike Chen
Mira Books | Hardcover | January 26, 2020
The Gist
A superhero trying to uncover the truth about her past and a supervillain trying to rob enough banks to retire to the Caribbean with his cat, walk into a memory loss support group at the YMCA, save a bunch of people from a fire, and decide to team up to find out who wiped their memories.
Read this if you like:
Stories about unlikely friendships and dynamic duos
The Verdict: Read It!
In his third novel, Mike Chen once again demonstrates his skill for grounding the extraordinary in real and relatable emotional stakes. The transcending friendship between the novel’s leads, Zoe and Jamie, is at the epicenter of the action and a driving force behind the plot. But rather than follow Zoe and Jamie on their journey to becoming larger-than-life heroes, we see these flawed misfits searching and fighting for something even greater: who they want to be. Chen’s emotionally steeped message that “extraordinary comes in many forms” hits home and will resonate. Riffing off this core message, Chen also has made a point to make his take on the superhero genre more inclusive, with Zoe being Asian and Jamie being LGBTQ+.
Zoe and Jamie share the narrative in We Could Be Heroes. But while Chen’s clipped chapters help build the emotional stakes and keep the novel racing forward, there are moments where they cause the action to move too quickly. As a result, some plot points are glazed over and not completely fleshed out. Nevertheless, We Could Be Heroes does come to a natural, satisfying close, and it’s clear that Chen has plenty of room to expand the “Extraordinaries” universe. Could we be seeing a sequel or a spinoff? We’ll have to keep our eye on the skies and stay tuned.
