I am not a fan of superheros. I find them boring. I don’t understand why anyone would like them. So I am immediately on a whole different page than Nick. He is OBSESSED to the point of making a real person fanfiction where he writes himself into a relationship with someone. That is so gross to me. Full on ick factor. The person is real. It crosses lines for me. So I am not the biggest fan of Nick’s. Even by the end I don’t grow to like him.
Like Nick, I have a diagnosis that makes others treat me poorly and that has made me feel less than others. It has made me wary of how people interact with me and it makes me get hurt when people talk about it. This is literally the only think about Nick that I can relate to. Yet, Nick makes constant comments about how people are “crazy”, despite hating people thinking he is. It felt a bit off that a character that brought up how he felt about people viewing him as less than would constantly call people things he didn’t want to be called and just so casually use the same language like it didn’t matter. That just bugged me. It also bugged me on a personal level just how much pill taking was a part of the story as pills can be a bit of a trigger for me due to trauma and the way that my own family went overboard trying to force medications on me for my own mental health issues. So the dad just never made it to my good side either.
I also didn’t like how violence was so normalized. Why were the friends always punching each other and threatening violence? It made me doubt the friendships and it made me dislike this as a teen book. I understand that the extraordinaries may have had violent relationships, but they are different than the main group of friends.
The book was slow. It took forever to really start, but then it also took forever to end. It felt like there was at least a hundred pages that could have been cut before I would have felt like the book was paced well. I think part of the issue for me was that I knew everything that was going to happen. Klune was heavy handed with the foreshadowing. By the end of chapter one I called the twists about Nick. By the time I had met the full friend group, I was 90% sure of the ending. After meeting both extraordinaries, I called the rest of the ending. There was nothing for me to look forward to. I just had to wait for Klune to actually get to things.
If you have read Klune’s adult books, then this book will be exactly like those in humor and writing. The only difference was there was no on page sex. There were sex jokes, but no sex. That is the only difference in an adult Klune and a YA Klune it seems. The same humor. At times it was a lot and a lot of the time it stood in the way of plot. This book might have been too Klune to really do it for me. There were some amazing scenes (like a scene where there was talk of microwaving a grasshopper), but they weren’t the norm. The humor that I enjoy from Klune didn’t rock the story this time, it just stood in the way. There were too many asides and joke scenes that just didn’t do it for me. The constant harassing of Officer Rookie about pedophilia was also just tasteless. Klune often has issues writing female characters and has a lot of misogyny that gays find cute written into the MCs of his books, this book might just be one of the best examples of that (of his books that I have read so far). I am so tired of gay men going “ew vaginas” and thinking it makes them cute.
I am glad that there was some ADHD rep. I am glad there is queer rep. I am glad that there were tough issues tackled. I just didn’t love this book like I should have. Klune is a top author for me, but this one just didn’t hold up like the others I have read.
Like Nick, I have a diagnosis that makes others treat me poorly and that has made me feel less than others. It has made me wary of how people interact with me and it makes me get hurt when people talk about it. This is literally the only think about Nick that I can relate to. Yet, Nick makes constant comments about how people are “crazy”, despite hating people thinking he is. It felt a bit off that a character that brought up how he felt about people viewing him as less than would constantly call people things he didn’t want to be called and just so casually use the same language like it didn’t matter. That just bugged me. It also bugged me on a personal level just how much pill taking was a part of the story as pills can be a bit of a trigger for me due to trauma and the way that my own family went overboard trying to force medications on me for my own mental health issues. So the dad just never made it to my good side either.
I also didn’t like how violence was so normalized. Why were the friends always punching each other and threatening violence? It made me doubt the friendships and it made me dislike this as a teen book. I understand that the extraordinaries may have had violent relationships, but they are different than the main group of friends.
The book was slow. It took forever to really start, but then it also took forever to end. It felt like there was at least a hundred pages that could have been cut before I would have felt like the book was paced well. I think part of the issue for me was that I knew everything that was going to happen. Klune was heavy handed with the foreshadowing. By the end of chapter one I called the twists about Nick. By the time I had met the full friend group, I was 90% sure of the ending. After meeting both extraordinaries, I called the rest of the ending. There was nothing for me to look forward to. I just had to wait for Klune to actually get to things.
If you have read Klune’s adult books, then this book will be exactly like those in humor and writing. The only difference was there was no on page sex. There were sex jokes, but no sex. That is the only difference in an adult Klune and a YA Klune it seems. The same humor. At times it was a lot and a lot of the time it stood in the way of plot. This book might have been too Klune to really do it for me. There were some amazing scenes (like a scene where there was talk of microwaving a grasshopper), but they weren’t the norm. The humor that I enjoy from Klune didn’t rock the story this time, it just stood in the way. There were too many asides and joke scenes that just didn’t do it for me. The constant harassing of Officer Rookie about pedophilia was also just tasteless. Klune often has issues writing female characters and has a lot of misogyny that gays find cute written into the MCs of his books, this book might just be one of the best examples of that (of his books that I have read so far). I am so tired of gay men going “ew vaginas” and thinking it makes them cute.
I am glad that there was some ADHD rep. I am glad there is queer rep. I am glad that there were tough issues tackled. I just didn’t love this book like I should have. Klune is a top author for me, but this one just didn’t hold up like the others I have read.