After a chance encounter with Shadow Star, Nova City’s mightiest hero (and Nick’s biggest crush), Nick sets out to make himself extraordinary. And he’ll do it with or without the reluctant help of Seth Gray, Nick's best friend (and maybe the love of his life).
Rainbow Rowell's Fangirl meets Marissa Meyer's Renegades in TJ Klune's YA debut. (Pub Date: Jul 14, 2020)
Nova City deals with the fight between two Extraordinaries, who are people with superpowers and secret identities. Nick is a big fan of Shadow Star and so he writes a popular fanfiction including him as the love his superhero's life. But along with the new pill for his ADHD, the failure of his romance with a good-looking jerk and the now regular absences of his best friend and beta reader Seth, this have also been changing in his city, and it seem the two Extraordinaries are more at it than ever, bringing danger to the civilians. That's when Nick decides he too will become an Extraordinary and help his soon-to-be best friend and later lover Shadow Star.
This book was nothing of what I expected and probably of what I've seen before. It's not that different from others but still enough that it was refreshing and appealing. You know when some secret heroes will have that best friend who is a big fan of their hero selves without ever knowing who they are? I think having that comic relief as the main character is the premise for this book, but with lots of twists along the way, because we don't really know who actually is Shadow Star.
I can't point out the exact genre aside from saying this is romance. But there's also the whole superhero thing, which is not just a side story, and it surely has a bit of parody-like scenes—especially with Nick's bizarre plans to become a superhero but not exclusively. The narration too gives airs of comedy at times, and it's very rare for a book to make me laugh so hard because of some parts that I got tears in my eyes.
The thing is, I think the book itself never decided whether we were to take it seriously or not. Is it simply for us to laugh or not? So while the narration will go off track too many times, surely to attest the character's ADHD, it'll take a serious tone at others. So I think the book failed in setting its tone, making me confused and resulting in something too long for what it is. It's a great book, hilarious story, but the tendency to wordiness and digression made me frown too.
Aside from that, we had great side characters, I think I fell in love even with the villain until... he started doing the things villains do, of course. The ending was okay, though it could have been better. What I loved the most, though, was how it reminded me of this old cartoon I used to watch, Static Shock. But gay(er?).
Recommended to anyone who loved LGBT YA romances and superheroes. To be honest, I think even readers outside the LGBT or even the YA genre could enjoy it. This doesn't deal so much with fandom but it's also true we get to talk about fanfics and Real-Person Fiction to top it!
Honest review based on an ARC provided by Netgalley. Many thanks to the publisher for this opportunity.
Rating: 4 out of 5.
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