After the ending of Only a Monster I couldn't wait to see what would happen.....

Joan is back but not in the true timeline and things have changed. Aaron Oliver is now an enemy and Nick is not who he used to be!

This book was full of action, drama, secrets and jaw dropping reveals!

I need to know what happens next and am praying at the altar of time that Aaron is endgame but still a happy ending for Nick!!!

Really enjoyed this audiobook.
Devoured the entire thing in a matter of days.
Narrator was really well suited to this book.
Great twists and turns to keep my entertained and interested throughout.
Really enjoy this world and the fantasy elements within.
Really eager for the third book in this series
4.5/5 stars

This couldn't quite live up to Only a monster, which was a 5 Stars read for me. And here is why:

Plot: While we are thrown back into the monster World fast enough, and I love the dynamic of Joan being on the run, it dragged on forever. I loved the gang coming back together but it took forever for them to figure it what to even do.
The ending felt like a little plot-holey. If the king knew what Elenor was doing the whole time why didn't he stop her sooner, why didn't he bring back up? Why would Nick prefer to make all humans suffer and die instead of just Joan. (This feels so uncharacteristic and plot devicey)

Romance: Nick is really dull, and I've seen no one ship Nick and Joan, so I'm sure the author must know, so dragging on the love triangle was... a choice.
Aaron feels super underdevolped in this. Besides him being entertaining with his witty and sarcastic commentary in Only a monster, Len built amazing tension between him and Joan. You can barely feel any of that tension in the sequal.
I think this could've easily been prevented by giving them a moment like a dance at the masquerade ball, or giving him his memories back somehow because him not having them feels like the reason for the lack of tension (and why would there be any when he doesn't know/ remember her)
Anyway really thought he would get his memories back, he didn't, kinda disappointed, hoped this will be fixed in the next book, so we'll get the Only a monster dynamic back.

Overall I still enjoyed the book, mostly because I was looking so much forward to it. I hope the last one will be delivering on the romance more.

Audiobook:
I really enjoyed the narrator's voice, it's very beautiful (almost sweet and fits Joan as she's young). She also has a very calming tone of voice, which made me wish for more emotion in more dramatic scenes. I might be spoiled from having heard some amazing productions recently, but those narrators pitched their voices differently for each characters, making it easier for the listener to distinguish between chracters dialogue. I think that is something the narrator of Never a Hero can still work on, especially when it comes to feminine and masculine voices.

This was a great sequel. The plot worked really well for me. Joan as a character was quite frustrating for me, especially in the first half. Her thoughts were very Nick focused, and i just can't get myself to care about him.
I definitely invested in the wrong ship in the first book.
The second half I couldn't stop reading, loved all the reveals.
I'm looking forward to the next book.
The audiobook was fantastic.
Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Never a Hero was one of my most anticipated reads of 2023, and luckily it didn't disappoint, living up to my self-induced hype.

In this sequel, Joan must face the aftermath of resetting the timeline, with all its unexpected repercussions. She is the only one that actually remembers what happened before she unmade the hero, the only one that knows that there's an enemy out there lurking in the folds of time. What hurts (Joan and me) the most is that both Aaron and Nick are more distant than ever.
Aaron, her hard-won friend – and maybe more (I just keep hoping) – is hunting her down and wants her dead. And Nick, her only love in the true timeline, is a stranger who doesn’t even know her name. I mean, the ANGST!

I found this book pretty intense and the plot was full of twists and turns. I really liked how Vanessa Len explored Joan's inner conflict, which was evident in this book even more than in Only a Monster. As half human, half monster, does she have to choose a side? Are humans all good and monsters inherently bad? Is delusional to dream of some kind of peace between them?

Nonetheless, I must admit that I loved Only a Monster a bit more. Maybe it was just that the first half was pretty slow-paced and I felt less invested. Or maybe there was just way less Aaron in this book (since the focus was mainly on Nick) and I felt a little disappointed.
To be honest, I re-evaluated Nick in this book, but I still didn't see the chemistry between him and Joan. On the other hand, even though Aaron came in so late in the story, I cherished every single moment with him. Len characterized him so well and all the little glimpses into his past (and his soul) and the vulnerability he showed with Joan (even in this new timeline) made me fall in love with him even more (and I'll root for him until the end, so Vanessa, pretty please, don't be cruel with our golden monster boy and this poor reader).

The last few chapters and the epilogue were terrific and I'm desperate to read the next book now!

A huge thanks to Hodder Books and Netgalley for this ARC and the audiobook copy - the narrator was great and easy to listen to!

This is the sequel to one of my favorite books from last year, and I’m always a little hesitant going into sequels because I often find them disappointing compared to the first book. Vanessa Len, however, have managed to get the sequel very intriguing with just the right amount of recaps from book one for this to be really good.

In this book we follow Joan after the events of Only a Monster where she successfully changed the timeline to save her family, but her success has come with a great cost. Her friend doesn’t remember her anymore, and no one but her remembers the old timeline.

It was quite a long time since I read the first book in the series, and I realized when I started reading that I didn’t quite remember what had happened. But I think that also worked out for the better since no one but Joan remembers the events of the last book either. That means that we get to remember at the same rate as everyone else. And I feel like this would have been a less satisfying read had I re-read the previous book. Mostly because there were times when Joan’s memory wasn’t all that clear either and she spend a lot of time trying to figure out why certain places felt familiar. And had I know from the start why, I know I’d been annoyed by having to wait for someone else to catch up. So, for me, this sequel came at the right time where the previous book was just hazy enough in my mind that everything clicked together like a satisfying puzzle in my mind as I was reading.

I think the plot was interesting and allowed for more exploration of this very interesting world. Joan’s unique powers get a lot more attention here and we follow Joan on the journey to figure out what her powers are and why she can undo things and most of all why her powers are deemed forbidden. It’s full of action and always new twists and turns that keep the reader’s attention from beginning to end.

The writing is easy and fast and fit the genre well and I find that it has the right balance between explanatory details and fast paced action. I love this world and I always feel like I know enough to follow along, but it never gets boring and too much.

I think there’s really just one thing that annoyed me while reading, and it’s the fact that we’re having a bit of “conflict due to lack of talking” in this book. The two main characters here, Nick and Joan, used to know one another. One’s the hero, the other’s the Monster, but Nick doesn’t remember any of what happened before. He doesn’t know who he was and what he did or what Joan did. Joan does, and when the details of the past timeline starts to unravel before them, Joan fails to tell Nick the truth. There’s reason for it in the book, but I don’t buy it. She allows for a bigger conflict because she doesn’t tell him everything. And that annoys me so much. I hate when things would probably just be better if people had a normal conversation. And I suppose I’m not a huge fan of the almost love triangle of this series either, but that’ll slide for now.

I have both read and listened to this book. Personally, I preferred reading it to listening, but it was a great audiobook too and the narrator was nice to listen to. It's a different experience listening, and I found that I lost a little of the details of the world when I didn't seethe text. But all in all, it's great either way.

A clear 5/5 stars and a series I highly recommend.