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In Only a Monster, Joan learned that her mother’s side of the family were “monsters,” people with the ability to steal time (days, months, or years) from humans to travel in time. And different monster families have different abilities in addition to the general traveling in time. Joan’s mother’s family, for instance, can hide items. But Joan’s ability is unlike that of anyone else in the monster world, and she has to keep that quiet to stay safe.
At the beginning of this series, Joan was enjoying her work at an old house and falling for a co-worker when she got caught up in a dangerous monster world situation. Her co-worker, Nick, had been trained to be a monster killer. And he was going to kill her family. In Only a Monster, she ultimately used her unique skill to stop him.
Now, she’s coming to grips with the new timeline that resulted from that act. Nick doesn’t know her, doesn’t know they were in love. And it has to stay that way. She’s back just trying to live a fairly normal life. But, of course, fate does not have that in store. The woman who had made Nick into a monster killer is back and about to make a dramatic, horrible change in the timeline. As Joan sets out trying to figure out how to stop Eleanor, she finds out that her unusual ability actually was one shared by a whole monster family — but they were all wiped out of existence.
Once again, Joan is torn between her love for Nick and love for her family. She’s split between her human side and monster side. She can’t bear the thought of herself and others like her stealing time from humans. But she can’t turn her back entirely on her family, either. The stakes are even higher in this timeline than they were previously.
Never a Hero continues the story of an intriguing world where time travel is possible but comes at an awful price. This book ups the complexity and answers some questions that were introduced previously. The action is nonstop and it leads to a big ending that now has me eagerly awaiting publication of the third book.
Rated: High. (Just over the line from moderate, though.) Profanity includes 8 uses of strong language, roughly 5 instances of moderate profanity, about 10 uses of mild language, and fewer than 20 instances of the name of Deity in vain. There is one use of British (bl-) profanity. Sexual content includes a few kisses. Violence is fairly frequent; there are a lot of scenes with peril, fighting and injuries, even some deaths. There are some bloody details but it’s not overly gory.
