Heroes: Saving Charlie: A Novel Book

I had to debate whether to give this book a two or a three. As you can see, I settled on the two. I believe the only thing that made me lean towards the three was the connection to Heroes, as it focuses on two of my favourite characters from the show: Charlie and Hiro.

The book is pretty below-par, for the most part. There are a few good moments (some of which are lifted wholesale from the TV programme) and a handful of nice bits, but on the whole, this is bog standard chick-lit. Which is odd, considering 99% of the readers will have surely only read it because of Heroes, which is all about superheroes and kinda, well, stereotypically "boy". I know it's about the six months Hiro and Charlie spent together, but did it have to be so... girly?

It's hackneyed, full of your dime-a-dozen cliches (see what I did there?) I think literally every page has some terrible, awful, abysmal italics (I did it again!), and, whilst this thoroughly annoyed me at first, my eyes and brain learned to completely ignore the fact that one in every ten words was a bit slanty. It truly is an abominable use of italics though, no author should ever think it's acceptable to use it so often and so needlessly.

Obviously, I knew what to expect at both the beginning and the end of the book. Little in the middle surprised me either, however, and this is somewhat disappointing. The writer had a love story involving a girl who can remember everything and a guy who can stop time, teleport, and travel through time, yet the middle - the bit that should be the most interesting! - is nothing more than tepid.

I did feel attached to both protagonists, but I believe this is more to do with their on-screen counterparts than the characters in the book. Aury Wallington seems to try and make the loveable pair wholly unappealing at times: "Oh look, Hiro is comparing her to a comic book character again"; "Charlie has flipped out for absolutely no reason... odd"; "[insert nerdy reference/scenario involving major inexperience with females here] ad nauseum. It's tragic, because a couple of the moments in Hiro's past are quite touching. Almost.

I could go on about this for far longer, sadly, but I shall leave it here. I shall merely complain about one last thing: the ending. I knew what was going to happen, but it was far too abrupt; the last few chapters seemed very rushed, shoehorned into a (short) page count. It didn't seem to ring true for either character: Charlie goes - so suddenly that I had to re-read the section twice more to make sure I wasn't missing anything - and Hiro just sits there and lets her? Bollocks to ye!

In short: too girly, too hackneyed, too obvious. Fairly poor all round, and has saddened me somewhat. Not in the way it intended. I knew as soon as I saw the inside of the slip ("Writer of Sex and the City") that maybe this wasn't going to be what I thought it was. I want my Hiro and Charlie back.