REVIEW: The Trouble with Heroes by Kate Messner

JayneB Reviews / Book Reviewsdeath / Fiction / grief / mentorship / middle grade / PTSD / self discoveryNo Comments

Bestselling and award-winning author Kate Messner takes readers on a heart-filling journey as a boy finds his path to healing.

One summer.

46 mountain peaks.

A second chance to make things right.

Finn Connelly is nothing like his dad, a star athlete and firefighter hero who always ran toward danger until he died two years ago. Finn is about to fail seventh grade and has never made headlines . . . until now.

Caught on camera vandalizing a cemetery, he’s in big trouble for knocking down some dead old lady’s headstone. Turns out that grave belongs to a legendary local mountain climber, and her daughter makes Finn an unusual offer: she’ll drop all the charges if he agrees to climb all forty-six Adirondack High Peaks in a single summer. And there’s just one more thing–he has to bring along the dead woman’s dog.

In a wild three months of misadventures, mountain mud, and unexpected mentors, Finn begins to find his way on the trails. At the top of each peak, he can see for miles and slowly begins to understand more about himself and his dad. But the mountains don’t care about any of that, and as the clock ticks down to September, they have more surprises in store. Finn’s final summit challenge may be more than even a hero can face.

CW/TW – alcoholism, PTSD, grief, animal in danger

Dear Ms. Messner, 

Thirteen year old Finn Connelly has not done well in dealing with his feelings after the death of his NYFD father who himself suffered from PTSD following 9/11. Finn grew up watching his father’s mental struggles each year as September approached as well as dealing with the fact that his father felt driven to help others over spending time with Finn and his mother. When Finn lashes out in anger and does something that gets caught on video, he’s got the choice of climbing 46 mountains – with a dog – or his mother paying for a replacement of the gravestone that Finn damaged. As they don’t have the money, climbing mountains it is. 

Why I Skipped Those Gym Classes 

 Have you ever tried to do cardio with a busted heart? 

 Seriously. 

 Mine is busy 

 trying to get through the day, 

 half-crushed under memories 

 that come pounding in out of nowhere. 

 That’s no kind of shape to be running the mile.

Is Finn happy about this or about how he has to complete missed assignments for two of his classes as well before the start of school in the fall? Why, no he isn’t. Does he mouth off a bit and sulk more than a little. Yep, he does. He drags his feet, rolls his eyes over how excited his “nannies” (adult climbers who go with him) are at things seen on the trails, and in general is a PITA for the first third of the book. But this makes sense. Aside from the issues with his father, his grandmother’s chocolate shop isn’t doing well, and thinking that he’d be going back to NYC soon, Finn hadn’t made any friends. I can see him being mad at all of this. 

What do you call it when a skinny kid who 

likes to bake cookies gets stuck 

with a name that means hero? 

What do you call it when a hero 

whose name means peace 

dies before he can find it?  

His turnaround is slow but then Finn’s got a lot of things to learn and a lot of growing up to do. He doesn’t immediately fall in love with hiking or mountain climbing. Trails can be muddy as well as steep. Mosquitoes and biting flies take away from views no matter how spectacular those views might be. Finn is also haunted by questions about his father’s death. Did his father relapse into alcohol as the stress of working through the early days of Covid brought back the trauma of 9/11? Or did his father just care more about helping other people instead of being with Finn and his mom? 

The story hits its beats as Finn slogs up mountain trails and begins to notice the beauty around him. He finds some replies to letters his father wrote to a well known hiker, the same woman whose gravestone Finn damaged, which helps Finn with some of the later climbs and hint that the woman knew some of the struggles which beset Finn’s father. Slowly Finn releases a bit of his grief but there are some answers which he might never get. 

Mom made excuses even when I was little. 

The Towers took something he couldn’t get back.

No matter how fast he ran into flames. 

No matter how hard he tried to forget. 

Memories like that stick to your skin, 

crawl deep inside you, 

and curl up in corners 

that still somehow smolder, all 

metal and ash.  

Putting all this together yields a lot of closure for Finn but I finished the book with a few questions. There are two moments when Finn, who loves to bake, remembers his father saying that wearing an apron and cooking makes Finn look like a girl. I thought that this would be examined more but it never was. The imminent financial threat of closure of his Gram’s chocolate shop is also dropped. 

I absolutely loved how the poems that Finn needed to write for school are integrated into the story as well as how the book is written with journal entries, notes, and texts. The photos of the Adirondack mountains and trails are gorgeous. By the end, how Finn handles finishing the required 46 climbs shows me that he has come a long way in character growth as well as healing and understanding how the weight of heroism affected his dad. B

~Jayne  

  “Some things are just tough and there’s no way around the hard parts. Only through.

Sometimes there’s no good path—just a bad way and a worse way—so you might as well choose one and get started.”

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