All Superheroes Need PR: Supers in the City by Elizabeth Stephens
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
He’s a villain looking for a hero rebrand. She’s the marketing genius who can make it happen in this fantastical romantic comedy by the author of the Beasts of Gatamora series.
All Superheroes Need PR
Over two decades ago, forty-eight young, gifted superheroes fell to Earth and were eventually marketed as opposing heroes and villains. Now, one exceptionally gruff bad guy is looking to hop teams. Hello, PR director Vanessa Theriot.
His real name is Roland Casteel a.k.a. the Pyro. First, swap that with the less incinerating the Wyvern. Next, put him in spandex to highlight that near-godlike body. Finally, give that hero in training a heroine—if Vanessa will play the part in a pretend romance guaranteed to make the city swoon. She’s game. As shy as Vanessa is, it’s her job to be Roland’s very own Lois Lane. Who knew that fake dating would change their worlds?
But falling head over heels for real makes for a dangerous shift in the narrative. A monstrous supervillain is bringing out Roland’s bad side again. This time, it’s to save a woman who, against all the odds, is becoming the human love of his superhero life.
Original, exciting, and unpredictable!
The following ratings are out of 5:
Romance: 🖤💙❤️💚🩷
Heat/Steam: 🔥🔥🔥🔥
Chemistry: 🧪🧪🧪🧪
Story/Plot: 📕📗📙📘📔
World building: 🌏🌍🌎🌏🌍
Character development: 🙃🙁😀😋🥰
Narration: 🎙🎙🎙🎙
Narration Type: Dual Narration
The heroine: Vanessa Theriot – she is the owner and PR Director at a marketing firm called The Riot Creative that specializes in crisis management. She hasn’t dated a guy since college. Men make her nervous. She has PTSD from her early childhood and is a pretty anxious person all around. She has a crush on Tyrannis, the most well-known superhero in the world. There are whole media outlets that are dedicated to the 48 and he is the biggest of them all. She is hired to rebrand the Pyro from a villain to a hero. Her firm is the smallest to ever represent one of the 48 aliens that crash landed on Earth as children twenty years ago.
The Hero: Roland Casteel (a.k.a. the Pyro) – when the forty-eight came to Earth, they grew up with host families and as the grew older, problems arose with some of them. Later thy were classified as heroes or villains and each side formed their own association. The villains have the VNA (Villains Network of America), while the Heroes formed the (CEO) Champions of Earth coalition. Some of the 48 didn’t join either group, they remained free agents. As Pyro, Roland was known as one of the minor villains of the 48 and he was one of the free agents. Recently, he was offered an amount that was enough for him to consider working with the heroes despite the fact that he was known to not really care about anything.
The Story: Nessa always liked the creativity of the PR business, though she didn’t want to be in the public eye, but representing Pyro was a huge boon for the firm. She really hoped that the meeting with Pyro would go well, but it failed from the start and Pyro left before they could even pitch their ideas to him. Her and her co-workers go out to drown their sorrows and Vanessa sees the Pyro again at the bar, after she has had a few too many to drink. The next day she finds herself signing a ten-year contract to manage the PR for the Pyro.
I really enjoy the premise of this story, and I love that there are 47 others that can be used in future books in this series. The world building was terrific with the way there are superheroes and supervillains each with a company behind them and PR firms with massive budgets that really form their identity to the world who treat them like the highest form of celebrities. Vanessa and her team rebrand the Pyro as the Wyvern, and I actually had to look up what a Wyvern was. I guess it is basically a two-legged dragon, while dragons have four legs. I wasn’t quite sure why they didn’t just rebrand him as a dragon. Maybe the name adds a unique touch that separates Roland from more traditional fire-breathing imagery.
“I don’t just breathe fire…I am fire. I generate it through every pore”
“There are only two truths I’m sure of in this moment. I’m stupid obsessed with f’ing Vanessa Theriot and I’m absolutely going to kill something. I way the two realities calculating how my obsession will be affected by the murders I am about to enact.”
“She’s softness and vulnerability all laid bare, and I just want to do terrible things.”
There are a lot of things I liked about this book. I loved the way Roland reacted to Vanessa. Not in their first meeting, but after that. She is a bit of a hot mess, with how clumsy she is, how anxious she is and how she often has PTSD episodes where she kind of stares blankly while remembering things from her past with her abusive mother. Roland is good with her and tries to help her despite the fact that he was supposed to be a villain. I also liked a lot of the backstory, including the fact that the biggest supervillain the Marduk, when asked why he does the things he does, says something like “I’m looking for something. When I find it, you’ll know.”
I love the idea of superhero PR firms managing their public image like celebrities—there’s something so rich about that setup. It creates an interesting tension between perception and reality, especially with someone like Roland, who fully admits he’s a bad guy but is suddenly navigating a rebrand into heroism. I love how deeply thought out the world-building is, especially with the structured divisions between heroes and villains, and the mystery of Marduk’s search adds a layer of intrigue.
Vanessa is a compelling heroine, too. Her anxiety and past trauma make her a vulnerable yet strong figure, and Roland’s fascination with her—especially considering he’s never cared about humans before—adds such depth to their dynamic. That second quote about his obsession with her and his inclination toward violence really highlights his inner conflict. He’s walking a fine line between attachment and destruction, which makes him unpredictable and dangerous in the best way.
This audiobook was narrated from multiple perspectives, done in dual narration by Sean Bassett and Dara Brown. Dara has a nice, clear voice though you can definitely tell she is reading. Though as the story gets going, I didn’t notice it as much. Sean Bassett has a deep voice, which I like for Heroes. He also reads at a bit of a slow pace, and you can tell he is reading.
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