Crowvus Book Blog

  Review After the disaster which was my last read for this Challenge, I immediately realised that this book was perfect for laying that ghost to rest, which is topical because that is the theme of this entire story: Brigid Cleary is driven to avenge the brutal torture and murder of her mother, Bridget Cleary, who was a real-life victim of extreme domestic violence in 1895. A historical note at the beginning of the book shares the facts. Mathilda Zeller creates the world clearly and the characters are mostly very well developed. You find yourself longing for Brigid to find the peace that she's so desperate for; being thankful - or perhaps wishing - for friends like Florence and Adelaide, and falling in love with Edmund and willing him not to let you down. Perhaps the only character who convinced me less than entirely was Mr Baxby. I felt like the whole story could have been rewritten from his point of view and he would have been a sorry character. How lovely to be back with charact...

  Just to start off with a point of clarification: this book was advertised to me as Upper Middle Grade. It is definitely not Upper Middle Grade. The first clue is the length (around 93k), but it also contains drug taking, domestic violence and school shootings, as well as including curse words. Reading it, I stubbornly continued to see Vincent as being 15, rather than 13. The review which follows – and the stars awarded – views it as a Young Adult book. I have so much I want to say about Even Heroes. The first thing is that I was desperate to know how it ended, which is a sure sign of a good book. I was invested in the characters from early on, but I really did not like Vincent. He’s exceptionally judgmental about everyone around him and, because it’s all from his point of view, you get every sniping thought which goes through his head. But that’s not a bad thing at all – for a protagonist who fancies himself a superhero, the antihero vibe works very well. I felt particularly so...