When a friend I’ve known for years suggested I read this book, I knew I was in for a treat of absolute weirdness. Her taste is a little odd, and when she recommended this based on the level of campiness, I knew I had to give it a shot.
Villains Don’t Date Heroes! (Yes, the exclamation is included in the title) focuses on Night Terror, the best supervillain in the city who is bored of her job. She has terrorized the town to the best of her ability, and we find her during a bank robbery that she is only conducting out of tedium. As she goes about robbing the bank, we are introduced to Fialux, the new superhero in town. Not only is she able to take down Night Terror, but she has her head over heels in love from first glance.
Night Terror knows she can’t get back to her general treachery with Fialux around, so she begins to plot ways to take her down. But when Night Terror has to come to terms with her past and how her expulsion from college is impacting her present, does she find something larger brewing? And how, in all of this, does a crush on Fialux fit in?
Now, I judge books differently by who they are written by and how they come to end up in my Kindle Library. Was this traditionally published, self-published, or published by small press? How does the piece I am reviewing fit into the author’s larger body of work? I do this because not every book gets the same amount of revision and eyes on it, so I do hold traditionally published books to a higher standard, and I give a little slack to independent publishers. When I started to dig a little deeper into what this author writes, I found almost the exact same story line. Over and over again, a geek falls for a cool girl. One of them is in the closet. A kiss changes everything. Will they risk it all for true love (or as true of love as you can be in at 17)?
Villains don’t date Heroes! is different. It’s Archer’s first foray into superheroine drama, and for that, I do give her credit for venturing beyond her typical story. But upon reading the synopsis more closely on Amazon, I found that this book had been previously written under a different pen name, and that pen name brought up a steamier variety of book. A peruse through some of the Amazon reviews also stated that maybe this was a third rewrite under a third pen name. Either way, this has been published in three different versions under three different pen names.
This book is decidedly campy, but not in an effective way. Even in the inanest of romance novels there is a thinly veiled plot over the pining and general frivolity. But in this, we are told Night Terror is bored. We are told Night Terror is attracted to Fialux. We are told how brilliant and capable Night Terror is, only to watch her fail over and over. We are told a lot of this story (what story there is amongst the gloating and rewriting).
But the writing isn’t the only problem. We only get any actual conversations between Fialux and Night Terror halfway through the book. Before that, it is Night Terror mooning over how attractive Fialux is, being thrown in jail, tinkering around, and brooding over how she was kicked out of college. There isn’t much here to be upset with, because there isn’t much story.
And there are major problems with the basic premise. If Night Terror is the greatest supervillain in the city, why is she bored? If she wants to take over the world, why is she just terrorizing this one city? Shouldn’t she be moving on to the larger state or country? Why does she spend so much of the novel harboring anger at her old college professor? As the story goes on, one realizes that very little of it makes any sense.
Look, I’m not here to tell you what to do, but this is the third time this mess has been published, and honestly, if you want an anti-hero story, or a villain story, or just a superhero story, go read anything in the Superheroine series by YLVA Publishing. I’ve reviewed a couple of the titles, and both are works of classic literature in comparison to this mess. Save yourself the time, energy and frustration, and go read something else.
