Jamie and Zoe meet in a memory loss group. They discover each other's special powers and secret identities, which Jamie uses for self-gain and Zoe uses to fight crime. They must learn to trust each other to defeat a bigger villain. This is a very human superhero story about expectations, friendship, and what lurks right in front of us unseen. Chen is a talented storyteller and draws the reader into tension-filled scenes. I highly recommend anything by Mike Chen. I was fortunate to receive a digital copy of this great sci-fi tale from the publisher Mira Books through NetGalley.

This book took me over a month to read. There was just no sense of urgency. I didn't feel like it was an appropriately high-octane adventure you'd expect with superheroes. The writing was pretty awkward and clumsy, and I felt like the plot itself was just super flimsy. Overall unimpressed and often bored.

I really enjoyed this story. I choose it for its cover and was not disappointed in the writing. I will definitely be on the lookout for more from this author.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for a free e-arc to review.

This story was incredible. I absolutely adore Jamie and Zoe. Their banter, the way they work together, and the fact that they (spoiler alert?) DO NOT have a romantic relationship! Beautiful.

Jamie and Zoe share secrets - only they don't know that they do. After a chance meeting at a memory loss support group that ended... poorly... they decide to join forces to find Zoe's memories and realize Jamie's dream of retirement on a Caribbean beach. Along the way, they discover a nefarious doctor performing highly illegal and unethical experiments on human subjects. Fascinating stuff, truly.

This seems so small, but honestly the moment that it was hardest for me to suspend disbelief was when the author brings up the "hired goons" that were fired. Zoe and Jamie manage to get the security badge for one of these fired security guards. You mean to tell me that a company of this magnitude didn't immediately repossess or reprogram a security badge upon an employee's termination? Doubtful.

Anyway, this was a great ride. I genuinely enjoyed every moment (except the security badge part ;) )!

We Could Be Heroes is the latest book by the self-proclaimed “geek” author, Mike Chen. In this story we are introduced to two characters, Jamie and Zoe, who look nothing like superhero material. Even though Zoe, aka The Throwing Star, has some pretty awesome physical powers, her emotional state is wacked. Jamie, known as The Mind Robber, has some mind-blowing (pun intended) mental powers but his physical prowess leaves much to be desired.

Both Jamie and Zoe find each other and compare their issues, especially their shared amnesia, they realize they have a better chance to survive if they work TOGETHER.

A light-hearted story that highlights the hero material in all of us. Although the plot line feels

Jamie and Zoe both have super powers, and no memory of their life before them. While Jamie is able to read minds and change memories as The Mind Robber, Zoe has extraordinary speed and strength. Jamie uses his powers to rob banks with no blood. Zoe delivers fast food order, and beats up bad guys.  After meeting each other quite by accident in a memory-loss support group, they form an uncomfortable alliance to try and figure out what happened to them.  The rabbit hole goes a lot farther than either of them expected.

Author Mike Chen has created two very fun characters, both inherently flawed. This makes them so much easier to relate to. Zoe might be super fast and super strong, but she still goes through wardrobe malfunctions and drinks heavily. Jamie is by nature quiet, just wants to read and is robbing banks in order to fund life on an island somewhere that he can't be found. We Could Be Heroes feels a lot like that NBC show Heroes, if the show hadn't taken itself so seriously.

We Could Be Heroes is now available from Harlequin Books.

I gotta admit two twenty-year-olds with super powers who meet at a support group for those with memory issues sounds like a pretty interesting premise, but it fell a little flat for me.

I've hear a lot of good things about Mike Chen's work and was excited to get my hands on his newest book. Took me a month to finish.This is the first book by Mike Chen that I've read, and I was a little disappointed. It started out promising with two likeable main characters, who have a suspicious lack of any memories from more than two years ago, and super powers they have no idea why they possess. At around the halfway point I started skimming, though, because the story was just a little too blah for me. The plot tension sloped halfway through which made hard to pull through. The action picked up again towards the last quarter of the book, but it had me close to DNFing the book. The character development also left me a little wanting.

Since I really enjoyed Here and Now and Then, I thought to give this a shot. A guy and girl in a large city, who've had their memories erased two years previously, have superpowers. After meeting in a memory-loss support group, they decide on working together to figure out why their lives are as they are. I found that the story sounds more interesting than the book was, and was fairly disappointed. The characters, their actions, and the plot all felt weak.

“A superhero and a super villain meet in AA and decide to team up” is a remarkably simple and excellent premise, brilliantly told in nearly flawlessly executed in WE COULD BE HEROES. Their changing relationship feels really natural, with a lot of give-and-take of trust and information, slowly building into a finale where I was on the edge of my seat to find out what would happen.

Above all else this book is fun. Yes, there’s danger (sometimes a lot of danger), and the stakes are really huge for the characters, but watching them was an adventure. The way they went about their heroics and their villainy totally fit their personalities and helped tell me more about them, long before they were explaining themselves to each other. It’s heartfelt and earnest without being sappy. The main characters are vibrant and very distinct from each other, they have totally different ways of seeing the world and it was really easy to track who was who. I liked the way their individual goals fit into their eventual shared goal without feeling like either of them completely changed just to suit the plot.

I love this and I’d happily read more in this setting if it ever gets a sequel, but it’s very satisfying as a stand-alone superhero story.

I am a big fan of Mike Chen's previous books, and was just as blown away by this one.

While I initially felt like the characters weren't developed enough, I still didn't have a hard time feeling for them and caring about their problems. As the story went on it became obvious that the "missing details" about the characters were intentional and helped put the reader int he same headspace as the characters as they learned more about their pasts.

One of my favorite things about all of Chen's writing is how accessible and relatable the sci-fi elements are. I never feel like my lack of understanding of science-related topics keeps me from staying engaged in the story. Here, I was able to accept people with powers because the people with those powers were just as unsure of their origins as I was. Also, it makes it easy to see the nature of humanity and personal relationships that are being explored through a "distant" sci-fi lens.

I will absolutely pick up anything Mike Chen writes in the future!

I heard a lot of great things about this book and wanted to like it, but it wasn't quite the hero story I wanted to read. I would definitely recommend to others though!

We Could be Heroes is so much more than a book about young adults with super powers and the forces that try to control them. The power of memories, the importance of knowing yourself, who to trust and of course platonic love and the power of friendship. A fun read with well developed characters, I did not want to put this book down.

** I received an electronic ARC from NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review of this book.

My Highly Caffeinated Thought: A fun and a quick-paced story about superpowers, friendship, and learning who you really are.

WE COULD BE HEROES was such a joy to read. Chen carefully wove together a tale with a perfect balance of humor, heart, and kicking ass.

If I am being honest, I thought that the book was going to take so many wrong turns and incorporated one cliche after another. Yet, as each page went by, I was consistently surprised by the originality and freshness of the storytelling while still maintaining the core principles of superhero-based fiction.

The author gifts his readers with characters, though flawed, that are deeply relatable. I could be friends with either of the main characters, whether I would be drinking too much coffee with Jamie or kicking back and having a drink with Zoe. These characters are where the book truly shined for me. There is no real hero, but no real villain either. In the beginning, We meet Jamie and Zoe as archrivals, but it soon becomes clear that nothing is as it seems. This concept continues until the very end with a twist I loved.

From the first chapter to the last, WE COULD BE HEROES pulled me in by making me laugh but kept me reading by giving me heart and a reason to invest in the characters. Such a good book!

WE COULD BE HEROES was not the book for me. I was initially drawn in by the unique premise; I can't remember ever coming across a book about arch-nemeses forming a relationship with no recollection of their pasts. And author Mike Chen really delivered on everything you'd expect from such a predicament: the confusion, hesitancy, and all-around fun nature of such a set-up. I also very much enjoyed the representation put into this. Our supervillain is queer! I love that! As someone who mainly reads YA, I've come to appreciate authors who are brave enough to allow queer characters to be something other than sanitized, flawless angels.

However, WE COULD BE HEROES dragged terribly for me around the halfway mark. It went from being un-put-downable to something I had to slog through. By the end I was so ready to be done with Zoe and Jamie that I couldn't even enjoy the resolution.

Overall, a solid read that ultimately just needed a firm editor. However, I can see myself revisiting this in the future.

Jamie woke up one day in an apartment with a note that said he has a superpower to read and erase minds. He decided to use that power to rob banks, giving him the name Mind Robber. Zoe also woke up in an apartment with a note that said she has super strength and a name tag with Zoe Wong written on it. Zoe stops criminals and has been given the name Throwing Star. When Jamie and Zoe clash, they start to realize there are similarities between their pasts. The two vigilantes work together to figure out where they came from.

This was such a thrilling superhero story. It started out with Jamie and Zoe in action, with him robbing a bank and her trying to stop him. It developed into a broader story about identity. There were loads of secrets that they kept from each other and that they had to learn along the way. I really couldn’t put this book down.

My only criticism is that the ending felt a little long. There was a long, technical action scene. However, the final pages were definitely worth the wait!

This is a great science fiction superhero story!

Thank you HarperCollins for providing a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I liked the premise of this story and the general way it unfolded, but at times it felt a bit too clunky or convenient when it was trying to be clever. I have other books by this author on my to-read list and will for sure explore them from my public library.

In Mike Chen’s latest book, We Could Be Heroes, we meet two people with extraordinary powers who embark on an unlikely journey into friendship and self-discovery.

Jaime woke up with no memories. Just an empty apartment, a nametag with his name, and the ability to read and erase people’s memories. Oh, and a cat named Normal. Jaime dreams of disappearing to an island where he and Normal can drink coffee and read books in paradise. So what if he has to rob a few banks in order to get there? They’re insured, so no one gets hurt. At least, that’s what he tells himself.

Zoe also woke up without her memory, but in a different apartment, with a different nametag, and no cat. She uses her super strength and incredible speed to deliver fast food, though sometimes her crime-fighting detours threaten her immaculate five-star rating. But what she really wants is to know who she is, something her powers can’t seem to track down.

The two meet at a memory-loss support group, where a freak accident reveals their secret identities to each other. Realising that the only way to get answers to their elusive pasts may be through each other, they team up. As they follow clues about who they are, both Jaime and Zoe realise there’s more at stake than their memories and their delicate friendship. Because to be a hero, they’ll have to learn how to trust not only themselves, but each other.

We Could Be Heroes is the perfect blend of light science fiction and contemporary fiction. It’s accessible and easy to read, but because of how vivid the characters are, this book is guaranteed to hook readers from the very first page.

We first meet Jaime as he’s robbing a bank. It’s difficult to introduce a character mid-bank robbery and make him endearing, but Chen does just that. Maybe it’s how a library book almost slips out of the backpack he’s using to carry the money. Or how he has to remind himself to stick to the script and maintain his over-the-top accent to cover his actual accent. Whatever it is, it’s pretty clear Jaime is probably not the villain of this story. Or not a very good villain anyway. Especially as he stumbles out of the bank just as Throwing Star, the local superhero vigilante, shows up.

It’s clear Zoe is the hero. Or she thinks she’s the hero. At least, she wants to be the hero. But just as Jaime isn’t exactly the villain, Zoe isn’t quite hero material. She has the strength and the speed to be the hero. She can hover and see heat signatures. And she doesn’t have a catchphrase like the Mind Robber, though she thought maybe she could work one in. No, Zoe’s not the hero because she isn’t really great with people for one thing, which is sort of important in the hero department. And she is technically a vigilante, which is frowned upon by the police. But really, it’s that she can’t quite make the lifestyle commitment necessary to being a full-time hero, where doing things like drinking before heroing isn’t at all allowed.

And this dynamic is the magic of this novel. Two misfits with extraordinary powers and no idea who they are. Neither one of them knows why they woke up alone in their apartments with nothing to tell them who they once were. And while Zoe desperately tries to solve the mystery of her past, Jaime would rather disappear entirely, believing that his past is better unknown. These are two flawed people who accidentally come together in an amazing enemies to friends storyline.

It isn’t often we get a story where the main relationship is a platonic friendship, but it is absolutely the perfect dynamic for Jaime and Zoe. These are two people who are lost in this world. Sure, they can do incredible things, but there are giant black holes in their history and that makes it hard for them to really know who they are. They struggle with the fundamental mystery of why the memory blackout exists at all, but Chen then gives us the deeper, more introspective struggle that grappling with memory loss creates. The question of who they were, and how they each handle that unanswered question are fundamental to who they currently are. Zoe feels incomplete without the memories where Jaime is terrified of who he could have been. Where one pushes to know, the other runs away, and yet they both feel the loss. It impacts their confidence and keeps them from believing in themselves fully and wholly.

The memory loss is a wonderful exploration about how the choices we make shape us. We often believe we have to know who we were in order to understand who we are. But how true is that? As Jaime finds out snippets of his past, it only makes him question what type of person he truly is. And yet, when it comes down to the choices he makes and the sacrifices he’s willing to make, we’re able to see that our pasts don’t have to define us. At least, not entirely. Because they don’t know where they came from or who they were, Zoe and Jaime aren’t the summation of their past choices. They are able to become exactly who they choose to be, and that turns out to be more powerful than their superpowers combined.

Often in superhero stories, the good versus evil dichotomy is very on the nose. There’s a good hero and an evil villain and the two are diametrically opposed. But life is rarely that stark and people are never that one-dimensional. Even after finding out that Jaime is the Mind Robber, the fact that he also has memory loss and superpowers immediately makes her believe they have more to gain by working together than being on opposite sides of justice. Just as their lack of memories take away a history of previous choices, it also gives them the opportunity to throw out expectations. No one knows who they are, at least, no one willing to tell them. So, there’s no reason to work against each other. In fact, being alone in their memory loss actually makes them more willing to trust each other. There are no previous betrayals holding them back, no complicated emotional histories influencing their future. This vulnerability is handled beautifully, and having both Zoe and Jaime struggle through all these various internal facets while also dealing with external antagonists is what makes this book such a stunning read.

For all of these deeper themes, We Could Be Heroes is a fast read with a ton of laugh out loud moments. Jaime and Zoe are a riot together and make gloriously bad choices so many times. Part of this misguided decision making is their obvious tendency to rely on their powers. They have the cheat codes to being human, but as they both learn, cheat codes only get you so far. As their investigation takes them further into their past, an actual villain emerges, forcing them to face their fears and insecurities. The themes of identity, choice, and believing in yourself are woven through every aspect of the story, giving the plot depth and heart. The characters are endearing, and the story is entertaining, culminating in a satisfying ending that ties up the loose ends while leaving a few tantalising threads open for potential future books.

We Could Be Heroes is a perfect crossover read. Part misfit superhero story, part contemporary, and part light science fiction, this novel will appeal to a wide audience. It’s perfect for a beach read or cosied up in front of a fire. Zoe and Jaime will make readers laugh, keep us on the edge of our seats, and inspire us to live a life that matters. It does what all superhero novels does: it makes us realise that if we choose to, we all really could be heroes. Plus, it’s a ton of fun.

This book hooked me from the beginning. I loved the characters and the platonic relationship they had. It was nice to read a book with such strong character development without it turning into a romance. Unfortunately, the first half of the book was better than the second half. It got a little dull and I struggled to finish. I kept thinking it would pick back up, but it did not. I wish there was as much excitement in the second half as their was in the first. It may have just drug on a little too long. Overall it was still a decent story.

With great power comes great responsibility…sometimes.

Jamie is your typical 20-something single guy. He enjoys reading, good coffee, and doting on his beloved cat, Normal. What makes Jamie unique is the fact that he has no memory of his life before two years ago. And that he has the ability to read minds and manipulate memories.

Zoe is your typical 20-something single girl. She likes cheesy horror flicks and works delivering fast food. She too has no memory of her life before two years ago and in exchange has super speed and super strength. Plus, she can fly.

Jamie is The Mind Robber and Zoe is Throwing Star. Each is a villian or a vigilante, depending on who you ask.

We Could Be Heroes is a cute and quirky look at what can happen when ordinary people one day wake up with extraordinary powers. The paths they decide to take and the consequences of their decisions. The feelings and thoughts that arise when one believes they are alone in the world; and the hope that comes when one learns they are not alone.

The world of We Could Be Heroes is based on the modern day world. While the city of San Delgado is fictional, it could easily be any major metropolitan area. This is nice since it allows the reader to come up with their own ideas about the city and it’s surrounding areas.

Both Zoe and Jamie are well written characters. The progression of their friendship I think was handled very well. There is very little trust between them in the beginning, especially when they each realize who the other person is. Throwing Star and The Mind Robber are arch-rivals after all. Yet when they realize they are more alike then they think, and when they start to work together to try and piece together who they each were, do we see the trust deepen and their friendship really blossom.

And their friendship remains just that – a friendship. All too often in books with a male and a female lead they end up in a romantic relationship. This does not happen in We Could Be Heroes. Over the course of the book, Jamie and Zoe become good friends and remain that way.

Due to the way the story ends, We Could Be Heroes could be either a stand alone novel or the beginning of a new series. It is heavily implied that what happened to Zoe and Jamie happened to others, so where are those people? What are their stories? Who did they become?

As a fan of superheroes in almost any genre, I can say with confidence that We Could Be Heroes should be added to the literary roster. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it and would recommend it to my readers – regardless of whether they prefer Marvel or DC. It is a fun and entertaining read.

The synopsis made me excited to read this book.

Superpowers.
Coffee and books.
Who could ask for more?

Unfortunately, the synopsis turned out to be better than the overall book. I really wanted to like this book, but it fell short. I enjoyed Jaime’s powers because it is not a common superpower. However, Zoe’s powers were unoriginal and uninspiring. Super strength and speed? I was thrilled that she was a female Asian superhero and a main character (not too many of those in the comic book world), but there was a missed opportunity to create a more distinctive, memorable character.

If you like CW’s superhero shows, you may like this book.