📖 Review: Putting Out for a Hero – C. Rochelle

Let’s have a chat about characters!

Now, it’s hardly a revelation that when you’re shifting POV character from book to book, then the way the reader views characters they’ve already met should change slightly. If we move into book two and book one’s MC is the rival of the MC of book two, then that’s definitely going to be a different dynamic.

And I love this. It’s one of the things I really enjoy about this standalone-but-interconnected format of romance series, and there are some authors who really (can) dig into it more than others.

Rochelle killed it for me here.

Look, I love Butch. Xander is my favourite (still true!) but Butch is so sweet and we know how mistreated he was and he needs Xander looking out for him – and I can even forgive him for wanting to just dispose of Simon’s body in Villains because, duh, it’s not like anyone knew Simon would survive Wolfy touching him.

So tell me WHY I wanted to murder this sweet superhero in this book?!

That scene where Butch is harassing Daisy had me STEAMING – I was 100% with Balty, ready to throw down, and godDAMN that’s amazing! Like I was mad, but also, I get it? That’s his character! We only saw him go – to quote Rochelle herself – Blade Runner Butch on villains in the first book, and though that one brings into question what being a villain means, they still weren’t people we focused on.

This really hones the focus and even though Daisy is fine and (I guess) there’s no lasting damage, I’d honestly say it’s one of the darker moments in what I’d call an edgy-but-not-super-dark series. (Dark romance is so much… grimmer, often, for me. This isn’t light-hearted as such, but I think it tips more often into dark comedy than true darkness.)

And THEN. Skip through to the end and we have the Epic Villain Showdown between Zion and Wolfgang, featuring Balty as an unwilling chess piece. Me: also fuming! Two reasons for this – the first being, Zion please, please do not undo all the hard work that Xander is definitely putting in to make sure his siblings slowly turn into well-rounded evil beings. It took Wolfy all of his book to recognise it was okay to be a little softer about his protectiveness of his family, and I don’t think Zion gets to pretend he’s on top for taking advantage of that, especially when Wolfy wouldn’t truly consider going after Daisy (Simon would) and that we know Zion wouldn’t truly hurt his mate (again, Simon would know this). The second – Zion, baby. Simon will murder you, giant lizard king or not, and so I was infuriated for Balty, who doesn’t want to be in the middle of this, and who feels like he is losing something, a little, by choosing to be with Zion; and angry for Wolfgang, because the Suarez siblings have worked too damn hard to truly be brought down a peg like this.

But it makes sense! That’s just how the world is, and the Suarezes can’t be on top of it forever!

Also… I am concerned about the mention of the lesser villains and what that’s going to mean for our clan because, you know, they’re all probably right. We love an underdog, and the Suarez siblings were the underdogs in the face of their parents, but with their parents gone… I don’t mind rooting for the villains, but I don’t know that they don’t as a whole deserve to face the consequences of the life they’ve reaped from the work of others.

It’s all so complicated! God, I adore this series.