ARC, Books

Book 473: Dreadnought (Nemesis #1) – April Daniels

WHY IS IT SO LONG UNTIL THE NEXT IN THE SERIES IS RELEASED!!?!?!?!?!!

It’s very rare that a book will grab me and keep me reading through a whirlwind of emotions. I’m so grateful someone from the publisher reached out to me about this book.* All I knew going in is that the main character is LGBT (she’s transgender, but also a lesbian) and this is a superhero story. It didn’t hurt that it was a young adult book (yay more diversity).

The publisher didn’t compare it to Perry Moore’s Hero, which I thoroughly enjoyed, and I think it deserves a mention. Although it’s about a cisgendered (born and identified) male, the group of quirky superheroes in that book reminded me a lot of where I’m hoping Dreadnought will go in the series. Continue reading “Book 473: Dreadnought (Nemesis #1) – April Daniels”

Books

Book 366: The Adventures of Captain Underpants – Dav Pilkey

What a charmingly cute chapter book! I read this book for Episode 7 of Come Read with Me and it was delightful! I’ve obviously heard of the story before, but have never had any impetus to read it as the book came out after I was past this reading age/level.

I read this in one quick sitting while commuting home from work one day. It was definitely one of my more interesting choices for a commute read but hey no shame in my game right? I’m sure I could read the entire series, 12 “novels” and various spin offs, all in one day, and honestly they would probably be worth the read. It was engaging and there was enough humor, potty and otherwise, that I found myself smiling for most of the read.

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Books

Book 239: All My Friends Are Superheroes – Andrew Kaufman

What a great book! I’m not sure where or why I decided I needed to read it but I’m glad I did. I think it was on one of the blogs I follow or one of the podcasts I listen to (I think it might’ve been Pop Culture Happy Hour, but I’m not positive), but either way I’m glad I read it.

One reason I thoroughly enjoyed this book is that it reminded me a lot of Perry Moore’s Hero. The heroes in both of these novels are not your standard superheroes, they have unique talents and abilities. What this novel did differently than Hero was to explain why the most mundane tasks are actually superhero worthy. Kaufman talks about choosing a superhero name and speaks to the mundane portion of superheroes regardless of their talents and reminds us that they are (mostly) all human.

“The final stage of finding your superhero name is accepting how little difference it really makes. Okay, there’s this one thing you can do, a thing you can do like no other person on the planet. That makes you special, but being special really doesn’t mean anything. You still have to get dressed in the morning. Your shoelaces still break. Your lover will still leave you if you don’t treat her right.” (77-78)

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Books

Book 46: Hero – Perry Moore

Let’s just say that any book that assumes superpowers are commonplace in society is already off to a good start. As usual I’m not sure when I added this book to my list of books to read, but I know I added it because Hero is a conglomeration of the various types of books I like to read—Young Adult, LGBT, Super Heroes, Coming of Age and Coming Out.

Hero is the story of Thom Creed a high school basketball star who volunteers in the community. Thom is a closeted gay teen who just happens to have superpowers. So while other kids think about prom dates, acne and school work, Thom has greater issues (seemingly) such as the fear of people discovering his (non hetero-) sexuality, his father discovering his superpowers and the strange things that happen around him.

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