Book Review — Hero by Samantha Young

“A man like me isn’t capable of being your fucking white knight.”

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• Buy HERO (Paperback)

I absolutely loved this book!!! Sexy, exciting, addictive, well-written… it was everything I’d hoped for!!!

The heroine was strong and sassy, and the hero was this Alpha, dominant, wealthy CEO with a dark past. I loved their banter and sexual tension, and the way their shared history gave the story added layers and depth. I highly recommend it for fans of the Crossfire series. This is a new top favorite!! 😀

The story in HERO is about a woman, Lexie, who ends up working for a powerful man, Caine, with whom she shares a painful family history. What neither of them counted on though was their intense attraction to each other and even though Caine wants to hate her, that soon proves to be harder than he’d imagined.

“So what… you get to act out some kind of vengeance by working me into an early grave?”

“Something like that.” He smirked. “It’ll be a comfortable grave, though.” He told me the salary and I almost passed out…

Caine’s eyes glittered triumphantly at my obvious excitement. “As I said, it comes with a price.” His grim was wicked and I suddenly felt a little breathless.  “I’m a hard man to please. And I’m also a very busy man. You’ll do what I want when I want and I won’t always be nice about it. In fact, considering what your surname is, you can pretty much guarantee I won’t be nice about it.”

I’m not going to lie, Caine came off as a total asshole many a time throughout the book… but it wasn’t without reason. I felt like the motivation behind his anger and assholery made sense to me. I’m certainly not excusing or dismissing all his mistakes, but I’m saying that I understood what prompted them.

I really loved that Caine and Lexie’s past “connection” was revealed right at the beginning of the book… and that made the driving force behind this story be more about what they did about it, as opposed to focusing on it’s mystery, which was something I found really different and refreshing.

“I wished Caine could see what I saw — that we were the same in some ways. And I didn’t want to be someone he hated. However, it was clear Caine needed me to leave him alone. And I would. Even if it was the absolute last thing I wanted to do.”

The #1 thing that stood out to me as I read was how fantastic the writing was. I loved the flow of this story and I loved the way the author described the details and nuances of emotion. It really got me right inside these characters’ minds and allowed me to perfectly visualize the whole story as I read.

Despite Caine’s goal to make her life miserable, Lexie was equally determined to get through to him and show him that she was different than her family. She truly believed that she could break down his walls… In contrast, Caine was totally determined to hold on to his (albeit understandable) grudge. I loved their back-and-forth banter. Between his obvious discomfort, her small triumphs, their conflicting goals but ultimately same desires, this story kept me smiling, chuckling, and fanning myself for pages on end.

Luckily, it became clear quite quickly that he did indeed have a heart — despite how well he chose to disguise it under his antagonistic exterior. But regardless, there was no denying that he was “kind of honourable in a fucked-up way” and one of the highlights of the book for me was seeing the way he slowly came around and the way both their relationship and attraction built alongside that change.

“Caine, is it?

“Mr. Carraway,” I corrected myself.

She chortled. “You can call him Caine, sweetheart. He’s not a god.”

“Do you think you could tell him that? Because I don’t think he knows.”

Ohhhh the sexual tension between them was SO intense!! It was HOT, sexy, like everything else in this book, the writing really shone through. I’d go so far as to say that this one one of the best written romances I’ve read. Every single glance, gesture, action, line delivery, everything was perfectly described.

“Say you’re mine. Right here, right now, you’re mine,” he growled.

I have to say that I was warned pretty strongly prior to starting this book that I should be prepared for Caine to be a supreme asshole extraordinaire but maybe it’s just that I’ve read a lot of darker romances but even though he certainly had his moments, I honestly found that I quite understood his behaviour. It was clear based on the way he was so often apologetic that he wasn’t really trying to be an ass, there was just a lot of baggage carried over from his past.

And like I said, he may have made some mistakes at times but he most certainly apologized. You just have to love a dominant Alpha hero who is humble enough to admit he fucked up and give a good apology.

He briefly closed his eyes, and there was remorse written all over his face. “Jesus, Lex, I should never have said what I said. As soon as the words were out of my mouth…”He lowered is head and I found my eyes caught in his. “You are the last person in the world I want to hurt.”

I’d put this book in the same category as Crossfire (and Fifty Shades minus the BDSM) but instead of a series, this is a complete standalone story with a damaged, moody, powerful, and dominant hero who is healed through his relationship with a woman he unexpectedly falls in love with. 

I haven’t read a Samantha Young book in quite a while but reading HERO definitely made me want to go out and catch up on every single one of her other books that I’d missed. I love her writing, I loved this story, and it’s easily a new favorite of mine. A top recommendation!

Rating: 4.5 stars. Standalone Adult romance.

• Buy HERO (Kindle)
• Buy HERO (Paperback)