Not Quite A Review: Superheroes Anonymous by Lexie Dunn

I seem to find myself compelled to write these blurb things up more and more lately while I’m in the middle of the book – it’s mostly because I’m a beta-writer on BookBub’s new Buzz (if you haven’t seen it, check it out – it’s still join-by-invitation only, but I can invite you so let me know if you’re interested). For that, I post a blurb a day about a book I recommend (or not). Often I use excerpts from my full reviews, but sometimes I just do a quick one on things I’m reading or won’t do full reviews on. This is one of those, but I thought you might find it interesting, so thought I’d throw it up here too.

How fun this one is! I must confess I love books where freakish cool things happen to “regular” people who turn out to have always been a little more than regular. Perhaps because I’ve secretly always thought I too was a little more than regular, and wanted freakish cool things to happen to me. In hindsight, perhaps, I don’t *actually* want freakish cool things to happen to me – they seem to be rather a lot of trouble and I doubt they wrap up quite as nicely in real life, but you know what I mean…

Anyway.

It’s not exactly a brand new story – there have been a few others I’ve read in this vein, most notably Soon I Will be Invincible and After the Golden Age) – but it is so far the most consistently enjoyable. Both of the others hit lulls at some point; this one has not (so far), and I’m more than half-way through. It’s a fun, easy read. Characters are well crafted and “super” without feeling overdone or over-the-top. It’s worth a look – it’s a cheap kindle book and there’s a sequel, so it is proving to be a great end-of-summer read…

UPDATE: OH NO! After that great setup, what a disappointment – it ended. Just ended. Like in the middle of the story. Grrr… A cliffhanger is one thing – I like those, there’s nothing wrong with them. But when a book just spontaneously starts something dramatically new in the story and then STOPS, well, I get annoyed. Because it always feels like a cheesy way for an author to force you to buy the next book… The books were released a year apart, so I’m willing to cut the author a leeeeeeetle slack. I’m hoping it was not her decision. And I understand that if it wasn’t, I shouldn’t hold it against her, because she was unlikely to be able to do anything about it if it was a decision forced on her. But if it wasn’t, well, then I’m seriously disappointed… Because the book was so fun all along, then all of a sudden – BAM! – the reader was whapped upside the head with a page and a half to go, and then it just stopped. Major twist, major event, and then nothing except – “now go buy sequel!” I did, at first. I read this one on kindle, and the sequel was only a couple of bucks. Then I thought about it, got annoyed, and returned it, unread. Because I really really really don’t like feeling manipulated into buying something else to finish the thought of the story I’m reading… I love series and multiple books, don’t get me wrong, and I understand that some stories need to continue in different volumes. I’m not saying everything has to tie up tidily at the end of a particular book. But you don’t treat books like TV episodes, with cliffhangers that literally leave you going “what the…?!” TV shows come back in a week. Books in at least a year. Tie up enough loose ends that your story feels finished, at least temporarily; it’s distinctly unsatisfying otherwise, and might well backfire and remove interest instead of sparking it, as this one did for me…