I was legit devastated when Sarah Kuhn’s Heroine Complex trilogy wrapped with Heroine’s Journey and thrilled enough to dance (literally, I danced) when she announced that she’d decided to write more stories in universe.

The four Heroine Complex novels (and one novella) thus far focus on Team Tanaka/Jupiter, which is composed of the group’s titular heroines – Aveda Jupiter (Annie Chang), Evelyn (Evie) Tanaka, and their found family – living and working in a San Francisco in which a demon portal was opened, a demon invasion was defeated, and demon powers were left behind in the enemy’s haste to retreat.

Those powers found new hosts in nearby humans, most of whom have chosen to continue on as before, albeit with lives made a little easier or a little more complicated, depending on which power they inherited. A few, like Aveda and Evie, have become superheroes, fighting the good fight against more demons who manage to force their way through the barriers between realms (where the borders have thinned enough to make such things possible).

In the newest volume, Haunted Heroine, Aveda and Evie travel across the Bay Bridge to attend a reunion at Evie’s not-quite alma mater Mason College, site of one of the most humiliating – and most traumatic – events of Evie’s life. Once on campus, our heroines learn that the once-benign hauntings for which the school is famous have become interactive and dangerous, threatening the safety of the students. Evie doesn’t want to see Mason hurt anyone else, but can she save them and keep herself, her pregnancy, and her marriage safe?

The Heroine Complex series is one of few successful prose forays into superheroing, especially superheroing while female presenting, because it 1) looks at the staggering logistics of managing the superhero life and 2) examines the “real-world” fallout associated with choosing said life.

Running toward danger when everyone else is running the other way is a noble endeavor to be sure, but what happens between those high-adrenaline moments? Can one person really be expected to do the butt-kicking and training while also maintaining a social media presence; managing appearances, personal schedules, and costume updates; and negotiating paparazzi evasion?

And what about the ways the 24-7 on-call life affects relationships? Can you ever really take time off? A vacation? How do the people who love you handle the fact that you’re perpetually in danger? When do you sleep? Have sex? Is there any actual privacy? When do you go to therapy? How do you handle the whole world knowing you had a bad one-night stand with your childhood friend? That you don’t get along with your parents? That you spend years suppressing your own powers because you burnt down your college library in a fit of jealousy? That you disappeared from your friend’s wedding reception because you’re two months pregnant and puking at random intervals?

Captain America doesn’t have to deal with that bullshit.

One of the most important themes of Kuhn’s Heroine Complex books, demonically granted superpowers aside, is that women are powerful and unbelievably strong: in what we can endure (what we do endure), in the choices we make, in what we expect from others, and in the way we protect and care for and worry about others.

In short, it’s in the ways we learn to protect ourselves.

It’s that last one that’s the most difficult battle in Haunted Heroine. It also may be something I understand a little too well and one of the reasons I connected even more strongly with this fourth book in the series and read it in less than 24 hours, despite working a 14-hour shift and having to occupy a 7-year-old who ran out of assigned “homeschool” work in that period.

The plot, as always, is fun and engaging; the characters are real and flawed and grow over the course of the story; the world gets deeper and more complex; and the girls are as horny, if not hornier, than the boys.

But underneath it all is a plea and a reminder for compassion, not only toward others but also toward ourselves. That’s something all of us need right now, but especially women. (Yes, all women. If you identify as a woman, then you are a woman.) Because, whether they know it or not, women tend to carry the lion’s share of the emotional and psychological burden in any crisis. We’re supposed to be calm. We’re supposed to be collected. We’re supposed to smile and let it go.

Yeah, no. Also? The pressure to be all those things? That’s a burden in and of itself. Remember that the next time you want to scream. And then, go ahead and scream. Evie would want you to. And if the whole neighborhood hears you, that’s OK. Because we’re not paragons. We’re people.

“Even Aveda Jupiter,” Annie reveals, “doesn’t always want to be Aveda Jupiter.” And if other people don’t want to give us the space to be humans, then we’re going to have to help one another make it.

Haunted Heroine by Sarah Kuhn (DAW Books) is scheduled for release on July 7, 2020. It is available for preorder now from your favorite online or real-life retailer.