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  • Tinder Press

Hero: A fierce and captivating literary love story for 2025

Katie Buckley

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Hero is a love story for our times: a novel that exposes the precious things women give up in order to be loved, and in order to be free.

'Pulls no punches... A fearless interrogation of female desire' Observer

'The truest representation of the headiness and power of female longing I've ever read' Kirsty Capes, author of Girls and Careless

'Thrilling and dynamic' Andrew McMillan, author of Pity and Playtime

'Fierce and thrillingly subversive' Financial Times

She's a waitress. He's a chef. They used to be best friends, but now, they're in love and living together in a studio apartment. She's also a selkie, Odysseus, and a cowgirl called Quick Fingers. He's a really good man.

When he asks her to marry him, Hero panics. She is lots of things but one thing she doesn't want to be is anybody's wife.

Drawing on a rich history of myth and legend, Hero is a story about what it means for women to be supporting characters in a world written by men. How can you be yourself when you are a product of other people's imaginations? How can you love another person and be free?

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Praise for Hero: A fierce and captivating literary love story for 2025

  • A lyrical exploration of the love we deserve but rarely receive. Buckley's writing is alchemical, transforming myth into truth and pain into hopeThis bold, clever novel sharply dissects gender, power, desire and control. Tender and acerbic, 'Hero' recognises the sacrifices women must make to be the authors of our own narratives. Buckley unsettles the reader's gaze in her excavation of myth-making, asking how we might construct our own legends from the wreckage of our patriarchal history.

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