Hero at Large by Janet Evanovich

Chris Nelson & Ken Callahan Knight’s book

Way back in 1987 there was this new fresh budding author who earned an opportunity and she published her first romance novel, Hero at Large. She subsequently went on to publish more of those romance books selling them right out of print. She went on to be one of the most popular romance/mystery series authors ever. You may have heard of her, she is Janet Evanovich.

Chris Nelson’s young life was filled with love, a stable family and a promising ice skating future. She practiced her craft so diligently that her personal life bloomed late. Not experiencing a date until she was 21 yrs old, the first man that showed any interest resulted in Chris getting married, pregnant and then divorced after the short whirlwind romance.

Since Chris’ first and only relationship ended almost as quickly as it began, the experience left a bad taste of deceit in her mouth. That loss of faith lasted for eight years until Ken Callahan entered her life from under the hood of her beat up car. Hero at Large is about the journey of Chris overcoming her faith in men and to take a risk on love.

Hero at Large was a sweet and darling read that had some humourous situations and cute couple banter. As Hero at Large was Janet Evanovich’s first book, I could see the early tell tale signs of the wildly popular Stephanie Plum series. There was an Aunt Edna who uses the famous line, “Ain’t that a pip”, a destroyed car and even a cousin Stephanie is mentioned. But let me make this review clear, Hero at Large is not the Stephanie Plum series.

I found Chris to be very annoying at times and extremely frustrating hanging on to those old scary feelings of love. It couldn’t have been more obvious that Ken was not cut from the same cloth as her first husband. It was tiring to constantly read over and over again the old ‘I will not love you and I am determined not to fall in love with you’ cliché. At times I had to put the book down and walk away from the unbelievable silliness of it all.

The hero of Hero at Large, Ken Callahan Knight was just a bit to perfect. I like my heroes to have a few flaws. There was slight character flaw that was turned into a mountain of a problem when it could have been a tiny molehill blip. Once again loop me back to the previous paragraph and I had to put the book down for a bit. It wasn’t that the story was full of angst; it was that I just wanted so badly to get past it all.

There were some sweet touching lines peppered throughout the story that were classic Janet Evanovich. While describing a small town, instead of reading glorified long drawn out adjectives to describe everything, it was nicely summed up with “The golden arches hadn’t found Middleburg”. I love that about Janet Evanovich. One line and you get the picture. It’s nice after reading Hero at Large that I know what becomes of the author and how she developed into the legend that she is. In fact, Janet Evanovich is my hero at large.