Reviewed by Cheryl
TITLE: The Strength of His Heart
SERIES: The Enhanced World #5
AUTHOR: Victoria Sue
PUBLISHER: Self-Published
LENGTH: 260 pages
RELEASE DATE: January 27, 2020
BLURB:
To protect and serve…. All Vance Connelly ever wanted to do was continue his family’s tradition and join the Tampa Police Department, but his dreams were crushed the day he woke with the enhanced mark on his face. After years of struggling to adjust to life as an enhanced human, by a stroke of luck, he met Talon Valdez and became a proud member of the FBI’s Human Enhanced Rescue Organization.
Samuel “Angel” Piper is eager to leave his DEA undercover work behind as he joins the HERO team as Vance’s regular human partner. But Sam’s painful past is ever present, just below the surface of the life he has built for himself as an ambitious young agent. When the team investigates rumors of a new drug using enhanced blood, the case’s mysterious connection to Sam threatens not just his life but Vance’s.
Trust doesn’t come easy for Sam, but Vance is willing to fight to convince his partner that the strength of his heart might be the salvation they both need.
REVIEW:
At a stretch, this book could be read as a standalone. However, there are a lot of characters and if you haven’t been following them from the start it would be very easy to get lost, especially as there are also a lot of acronyms. Even if you have read the series from the start, it can be overwhelming at times.
The enhanced are a group of people who, at around puberty, develop special abilities. They are marked by a strange scar on their faces that appears when their abilities first manifest. The public at large have a deep distrust of the enhanced and they are treated with all kinds of responses from accepting to dangerous. Insurance premiums are higher, housing is hard to get and jobs even harder. At the deep end, enhanced children are under the total control of their parents until they reach 21 and the government can take into custody any children they believe might pose a risk.
HERO is a new FBI organization that pairs humans with enhanced partners. The group is led by Talon Valdez, who is himself enhanced.
The books (apart from Book 4) roughly follow one pair in the team, and this time it is the turn of Vance Connelly and Sam Piper. Commonly, one of the pair is particularly damaged mentally and/or emotionally and the hurt/comfort trope is what first brought me to the series. It’s done very well.
I think the author’s greatest skill is in bringing her characters to life. All of the characters journey far beyond their own books and help strengthen and uphold the books and pairings that come after. This is why it is beneficial to have read all the books in order. After having followed a pair on a journey that takes them through hell, it’s easier to remember who they are when they appear in later books.
Vance is one of my favourite characters, being an absolute gentle giant. His enhanced abilities have given him superhuman strength and healing abilities. Despite the fact he is heading towards seven feet tall, and has the strength of ten men, he is endlessly calm, kind and gentle. He’s always putting others before himself and emotional abuse he has carried from his school days, has left him with low self-esteem and fear of his own abilities. An unfortunate accident reinforced this and he is constantly afraid of hurting others.
Sam also has self-esteem issues carried with him from his harsh past. He has little to no confidence in himself or the world and is unable to trust. Neither one is able to open up to the other with the result that their relationship is a rocky one.
All of the characters, whether the main characters, their counterparts on the team, their families or entirely peripheral, are well drawn and extremely real. There are characters whose onscreen time amounts to only a few pages, but they stay with you long after the book is finished (I’m looking at you, Marie). Even though the stories are strong and well thought out, it’s the characters that really bring them to life.
As much as I have been raving about the characters, the stories are also a huge part of the appeal, or otherwise, of a book. I personally think the stories told in this series are captivating and highly engaging, but they are a bit on the dark side. If you like your romance light and fluffy, or perhaps with just a tinge of danger, then these are probably not the books for you. The stories take you to dark places and show you the nasty side of the human psyche. All of these boys are damaged and that damage along with the people who caused it, often comes back to haunt them.
If you don’t like reading about bad things happening to children, then you’d best give it a miss. If, however, you like a good strong story, peopled by a host of well-drawn, engaging characters taking a walk on the wild side, then these books are likely to please. They deliver on all counts and are a go-to series for me.
RATING: 
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