Can’t-Wait Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted over at Wishful Endings to spotlight and discuss the books we’re excited about but haven’t yet read. Most of the time they’re books that have yet to be released, but not always. It’s based on the Waiting on Wednesday meme, which was originally hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine. 

This week my Can’t-Wait-For Book is Villain by Natalie Zina Walschots!

Villain (Hench, #2) by Natalie Zina Walschots
Genres: Adult, Queer Protagonists, Sci Fi
Representation: Bi/pansexual disabled MC
Published on: 19th May 2026
Goodreads

The Boys meets Starter Villain and Assistant to the Villain in Natalie Zina Walschots’s electrifying, sharp, violent, and hilarious sequel to the highly acclaimed novel Hench, in which the Auditor must confront the near-impossible in order to right the many wrongs in the superhuman industry…or cause more of them. She’s not picky.

Anna, better known to superheroes as the Auditor, has carved out a name for herself. Any hero unlucky enough to cross her path knows her potential and powers. Surely, success should taste she has an incredible job with lots of perks, and her boss will literally annihilate anyone who crosses her, and her greatest enemy, the former hero Supercollider, has been utterly defeated and literally ground to a pulp.

But Anna still has her sights set on a greater destroying the Draft, the organization that makes, trains, and manages the world’s most powerful superheroes. These “heroes” have shown time and time again that they do more harm than good, and now is the time to stop the damage at its source.

Yet all is not well for the Auditor and her fellow evildoers. Her employer, Leviathan—the world’s most feared supervillain—is not coping well with Supercollider’s defeat at someone else’s hands. Moreover, her unlikely ally and unexpected friend, Quantum Entanglement, has vanished without a trace, leaving Anna to examine all the ways they deceived each other. Tension and uncertainty fill the air, and fear that this moment of triumph is about to crumble looms over all of them.

Anna soon finds herself facing down an opponent unlike any she’s taken on before—not another superhero, but someone like her…someone much more the Draft’s Chief Marketing Officer. This isn’t a test of physical prowess, but ideas, and as the fight spirals deeper and deeper, with new foes popping up every day—she’ll need more than just her superpower—data research—to keep ascending through the supervillain ranks.

It’s guerrilla ad warfare, and the Auditor might have finally met her match.

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AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

Listen. L I S T E N! Hench is one of my forever-books, okay? It’s SO fucking good: it’s viciously clever, it’s wet-yourself-laughing hilarious, it has a deeply non-traditional non-sexual romance that makes my queer weirdo soul go heart-eyes, it’s so effortlessly inclusive, it’s so so so unique and outside-the-box AND I LOVE IT AND WILL LOVE IT FOREVER!

And it didn’t end on a stupid cliffhanger or anything, I didn’t think we would get a sequel because Hench didn’t need one. You know? There was room for sequels but it was a perfect standalone, too. BUT YOU BETTER BELIEVE I SHRIEKED TO THE STARS WHEN A SEQUEL WAS ANNOUNCED!

And yes yes yes, whatever, the pub date was pushed back several times, I DON’T CARE, authors can rewrite and edit as much as they want and I will only be grateful (you deal with all the stress of delaying release so that the book I eventually get to read is perfect??? THANK YOU <3) but the current pub date is for-sure-final AND LOOK WE EVEN HAVE A COVER NOW!!!

I love it so much, like, flaily-shrieky much. IT MATCHES THE HENCH COVER SO PERFECTLY! (It didn’t even occur to me before that some twit in the cover department might give the sequel a completely different style of cover, because sometimes that happens, doesn’t it? I’M SO HAPPY IT DIDN’T THIS TIME) Anna with her cane, front and centre! Excuse me while I get a bit weepy. (I’m a lot more disabled than I was when Hench came out, okay, getting a disabled character on the cover hits a lot harder now!)

And if you haven’t read Hench yet – that’s okay! Villain won’t be out until next May, so you have LOADS of time! I’ll even join you – I will ABSOLUTELY be rereading Hench to prepare!

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go back to going

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!

The post I Can’t Wait For…Villain by Natalie Zina Walschots appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.