
The Extraordinaries by TJ Klume
TJ Klune’s 2020 novel The Extraordinaries is only the second-best YA/superhero/coming of age/Spiderman movie parody/neurodivergent/ queer rom-com I’ve read this year. I’ll explain at the end of the review why it only came in second.
Nicholas Bell is sixteen, gay and out to his father, friends and school. Nick lives with ADHD. His mother was killed a few years ago, and he and his cop dad share a loving but uneasy relationship. Nick’s life is further complicated by his crush on one of the two of Nova City’s superpowered, or Extraordinary, people—Shadow Star. Nick writes voluminous fanfic about Shadow Star and obsesses over him daily. It’s easy to obsess over Star and his nemesis, PyroStorm, because the two Extraordinaries seem to clash more and more frequently, their battles are becoming dangero... Read More