Review: We Could Be Heroes

We Could Be Heroes by Philip Ellis
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Will is an English openly gay man who works in a bookshop by day and is trying to make a name for himself on the Birmingham drag queen circuit by night.

Patrick is an American actor, famous for portraying Captain Kismet (sort of Flash Gordon, All American hero who accidentally gets launched into space and finds himself on a strange planet) in a superhero movie, he is in Birmingham filming some additional scenes for Kismet 2 and this film could catapult him into the big leagues (think Marvel franchise). His agent has always told him he can be openly gay or he can be a successful movie star and he has heeded that advice, so much so that he hasn't had a relationship in four years.

One night Patrick's co-star, his stunt man and his nutritionist persuade him to come out on the town and their taxi driver takes them to a gay bar where Will's friends are performing and Will is serving cheap shots as a roving drag queen waitress. They meet ... and the rest is history.

The story is interspersed with flashbacks to 1949 and the husband and wife duo who originally wrote the Kismet comics, their imaginations envisaged a world where they could be their authentic selves whilst having to hide who they really were in real life.

I enjoyed this (sort of). My problem is that it didn't really know what it wanted to be. Is it a romance? Is it a political statement about the way in which current society appears to be reverting back to 1950s views about repressing homosexuality and anything other than heterosexual behaviour? Is it about some idea that stories transport us to other worlds and open our minds to things being different? I don't know and that was the problem for me. Then everything had a lovely happy ever after all wrapped up in a nice bow.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley.

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