HOPE BOLINGER
Acquisitions Editor. Novelist.
YA Speculative
Reads with wonky elements (sci-fi, fantasy, and just plain weird)
Dear Hero (Hero Book One)
Up-and-coming teen superhero Cortex is on top of the world—at least, until his villain dumps him. If he’s going to save his reputation, he needs a new antagonist, and fast.
Meanwhile, the villainous Vortex has once again gotten a little overeager and taken out a hero prematurely. Will any young hero be able to keep up with her? Maybe she should work on finding a steady relationship with an enemy she won’t kill in the first round.
So the two turn to Meta-Match, a nemesis pairing site for heroes and villains, where they match right away. After throwing punches at each other behind coffee shops, practicing their fight choreography, and hiring henchmen to do their bidding (mostly just getting them coffee), they begin to realize they have a lot more in common than just names that annoyingly rhyme.
But not everything in the superhero world is as it seems. Who are the real heroes and villains? And just how fine of a line is there between love and hate? When darkness from the past threatens them both, Cortex and V may need to work together to make it out alive.
Dear Henchman (Hero Book Two)
Kevin and Himari didn't plan to be heroes.
Henchmen and sidekicks aren’t supposed to fall in love. Or save the world. They’re supposed to brew coffee, take pics of their hero or villain for social media, and stay in the background.
That was sidekick-slash-frat boy Kevin and henchwoman-slash-tech genius Himari’s plan, until a taxidermy-collecting villain robs Kevin’s hero of his powers and leaves Himari’s villain wounded. Now it’s up to the sidekicks and henchies to save the world.
Without powers, they’ll go up against the Shadow Assassins (a deadly organization that can’t work a PowerPoint to save their lives), road trips-slash-kidnappings, and weird initiation rituals that may or may not involve singing campfire songs.
Himari and Kevin will battle the odds, their insecurities, and a strangely polite Midwestern villain as they discover if they have what it takes to profess their love through Mexican food metaphors—and save the world from a nuclear disaster.
Dear Hades
Dating apps are hard, especially in the world of Greek monsters and demigods.
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Medusa has had no luck with her matches. Soon as she meets them, and they see her, they turn to stone. And as much as she loves her collection of statues in her backyard, she's running out of room ... and matches.
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Tiresias, the blind prophet, has difficulty seeing eye to eye with his dates. And wonders if anyone can handle his sudden, booming premonitions.
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They'll match on a dating app curated by Hades and Persephone themselves, the epitome of #relationshipgoals on Olympus.
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But with a number of Greek heroes wanting to eliminate monsters not only from the app but from the mortal world, the couple may have signed up for a lot more than a dating profile.
Why the Sparrow Cries (Sparrow #1)
When Harper meets the Greek Dark Age teen, Homer, in the British Museum, she ushers him to her archeologist Uncle’s apartment to avoid the British authorities.
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And, to figure out a way to get Homer back to his country, Palikari, before they break the space-time continuum or something she’d seen in an episode of Doctor Who.
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Closed off to human interaction, due to an incident that happened back in Phoenix, that might have to do with her parent’s divorce right before her dad’s coincidental death, Harper finds herself opening up to her new Dark-Age companion.
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Will she learn to love again? Or will an ex-archeologist turned loose snag the only person she’s felt safe around in years?
How the Eagle Dies (Sparrow #2)
Harper didn’t know what to expect for her summer vacation to England after her senior year of high school.
But a one-stop destination to the Greek Dark Ages wasn’t exactly what she had in mind. Paired with her time-traveling boyfriend Homer, an actual member of the Greek Dark Ages, she’ll endeavor to find a way home before the Greeks invade. And according to her uncle, the small nation of Palikari has months, maybe weeks, before the Greeks Hellenize them and erase them from history.
But she’s caught the eye of the village leader’s son, Pandarus, who doesn’t seem too keen on how close she is with Homer.
She must find a way to flee the land and avoid an untimely wedding. And maybe … just maybe, get back to the present with Homer intact.