Book Review: We Could be Heroes

We Could Be Heroes by Mike Chen


Zoe Wong and Jamie Sorenson both have psychic powers, but Zoe uses hers to beat up bad guys in her spare time while Jamie robs banks. The catch is that neither of them have any memories from before two years earlier. When they meet up at a memory loss support group and decide to start helping each other uncover the secrets of their past, the book turns into a rompy retro bromance involving a secret organization, dangerous scientific experiments, and a sentient being formed of pure electricity.

One of the reasons why this book felt like a retro superhero from the 20th century is that the scope of their efforts are focused on saving their town of San Delgado. It’s not something that will save the world, or something that they’re doing to save a specific person, but something endangering their town. Specifically, they want to save their town from having its electricity shut off, which seemed vitally important to the characters but a minor nuisance for most people in real life. (I think I must have missed some of the details.) There’s chase scenes and fight scenes and Zoe even has a cool superhero name and a home-made costume.

The characters are deep enough to like them but not so deep that I really felt like they were real people. Jamie is supposed to be the sensitive, kindly one, but he also threatens bank tellers with memory wipes, which is pretty shifty behavior. Zoe is supposed to be mostly on the straight-and-narrow, but she literally beats people into unconsciousness, which is only ha-ha funny if you don’t look too closely. The book is kind of fun, but very shallow.




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