The Last Superhero by Astrid Cruz

Title: The Last Superhero

Author: Astrid Cruz

Series: N/A

Genre: Science Fiction, Romance, New Adult, Superhero, Superpowers

Source: ARC

Rating: 2 Stars.

Available at:

Amazon(.ca) • Goodreads • Amazon(.com)

Blurb: (via Goodreads)

Even heroes have the right to bleed... 

Everybody knows that Steven S. Waldorf, the last superhero to roam the Earth, died twenty-eight years ago. What everyone ignores is that not only is he still alive, but being kept under the protection of the United State's government.

That is until, one night, he finds himself saving a young woman from getting mugged.

Giana is no ordinary twenty-nine year old, though. She's witty, badmouthed, and once she's set her focus on something nothing can make her stray from her goal.

Even if that means putting her life on the line to save the man she's come to know and love from the nightmares that torment him. 

Literally

My Review:

The low review for this novel is a mixture between my personal taste and actual problems with the book. As a reviewer, I only ever take off one star maximum for issues that I personally had with the book, but they are issues that make it difficult for me to read through and enjoy the book in question.

Starting with said personal issue, most of this book is written in something akin to internal dialogue. You experience all the random thoughts the main character has (her opinions, fantasies, questions, random thoughts), mixed with the actual narration of the novel. Because both internal thoughts and the narration were in first person point of view, and their was no formatting variation (i.e. Italics, bolding, or ‘single quotations’), I sometimes got confused as to what was actually happening, and what the main character wanted to happen. Thus, my flow of reading was constantly interrupted to take a minute and reread to figure out what was going on. I personally like to get fully immersed into my reading, usually finishing a book in one to two sittings; this book however, took me several sittings because the writing didn’t draw me in enough. Again, this is a personal reading issue of mine, this may not apply to other readers.

The major problem I found with the book itself was the pace of the story line. Everything between the main character, Gina, and our romantic interest/ superhero, Steven, consumed the first third of the book. The romantic aspects of this book happened EXTREMELY fast, with little to no sexual tension (or any tension) that makes the reader desperate to read on and find out what will happen between them. As for the conflict, it pretty much takes a back seat to the love story. You don’t really get a sense of the major conflict of the novel until much later. You get snippets here and there of the actual plot outside of the romance at the beginning, but these snippets felt more like an after thought than anything else. It was almost as if they were added later on to have the plot make more sense and flow better without much success.

HOWEVER, there were some great things about this book as well. The main character, Gina, is a big fan of poetry (as mentioned near the beginning of the novel). With the novel written in her point of view, in certain areas, the writing would turn very poetic to match the passion and excitement of the scene. This was popular with more of the intimate scenes. It’s a creative choice I would never have thought of, but I found to be very interesting and added a different layer to the book that I haven’t seen in many other novels. (One book I have seen it in is Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi, and it was just as satisfying in The Last Superhero).

I also really liked most of the underlying story outside of the romance, specifically Steven’s story and even Steven himself. A mixture of his superpowers, his family history, his nightmares, and his rivalry with his brother make him such a dynamic character that really felt real to me. I don’t know if it is the sucker in me who loves a tortured male lead or what, but Steven was by far the best-developed character in this story and my personal favorite person to read about.  Props to Astrid Cruz for a job well done there.

Overall, it wasn’t a BAD book, but it definitely wasn’t great either. I do believe that with a few read throughs and some edits to the speed of the story line in contrast to the romance, this book could really be something. I will have to keep a look out for Astrid Cruz’s future writing to watch her writing grow and develop into something wonderful.