Book Review: Super Adjacent by Crystal Cestari

I bought this one from Book Outlet because it seemed light and fun and sapphic. I was right about the last part. Book summary:

Claire has always wanted to work with superheroes, from collecting Warrior Nation cards as a kid to drafting "What to Say to a Hero" speeches in her diary. Now that she's landed a coveted internship with the Chicago branch of Warrior Nation, Claire is ready to prove she belongs, super or not. But complicating plans is the newest WarNat hero, Girl Power (aka Joy), who happens to be egotistical and self-important... and pretty adorable.
 
Bridgette, meanwhile, wants out of WarNat. After years of dating the famous Vaporizer (aka Matt), she's sick of playing second, or third, or five-hundredth fiddle to all the people-in-peril in the city of Chicago. Of course, once Bridgette meets Claire—who's clearly in need of a mentor and wingman—giving up WarNat becomes slightly more complicated. It becomes a lot more complicated when Joy, Matt, and the rest of the heroes go missing, leaving only Claire and Bridgette to save the day.

The setting is an alternate universe Chicago where superheroes are real and are a cross between celebrities, public figures, and law enforcement. It's similar to Marvel/DC, except the celebrity angle is really pitched up (disclosure: I've only read a few comics). Each big city region gets four superheroes to protect it, and Warrior Nation is a national corporation/publicity machine/etc. The Chicago WarNat headquarters were really cool to read about; they were kind of like a cross between what I imagine the Avengers tower, CIA headquarters, and Google headquarters to be like. The worldbuilding was fleshed out, and the author's love for Chicago shows.

 Claire is obsessed with the superheroes and with Warrior Nation. Her diary mentioned in the book summary is actually a bulging super-scrapbook filled with files and information on all the superheroes and every aspect of WarNat. She's geeky and a little much with her superhero worship. While she initially thinks Joy is full of herself and used to getting her way due to her pretty girl privilege, it's a very short hate to love thing that quickly becomes them making out in WarNat headquarters broom closets. Their relationship is cute, if a bit first-love-cloying. I liked that the WarNat top brass made Claire the Girl Power advisor because she's young; there's a cool scene where she talks them out of making Girl Power wear a revealing sexy costume.

Bridgette's an old hand in WarNat, having dated Matt/Vaporizer for four years. Her part of the story shows the dark underside of superherodom and celebrity. Vaporizer's fangirls bash her online and, when they come across her in real life, scream into her face that her boyfriend can do better than her. She's called all sorts of horrible names, both online and in person. Also, she's in constant danger since Matt has no secret identity and everyone knows they're dating, so she's been kidnapped countless times, attacked in the street, had important public events ruined by mobbing fans and her boyfriend flying though glass windows. Matt often stands her up, and while it sometimes is to rescue a kidnapped girl, it's just as often to film a commercial for something. It was really sad to read about everything she went through, and I'm pretty sure she was only 18 or so. Bridgette deserved better. I liked that she was friends with the other superheroes' significant others, and they made a little "super-adjacent" club.

The summary makes it sound like Bridgette takes Claire under her wing, but in the story, Bridgette and Claire are thrown together because they're kidnapped by superpowered bad guys. Those baddies are the reason why the superheroes disappear, and WarNat is being all tight-lipped about it. With the help of smarmy assistant Teddy, Claire and Bridgette must find out the truth and save the superheroes.

This book was a fun read in the beginning and suspenseful in the middle and end. It really took a hard look at how difficult it must be to be the significant other or parent of a superhero. Much like professional athletes, the supers join Warrior Nation in part because of the huge paychecks, but their loved ones are constantly afraid they will be hurt or killed. The part where the superheroes go missing is harrowing to read about because of their families' and partners' grief and worry. This book isn't afraid to go dark, despite the cover and premise, and for that I respect it. In terms of the queer representation, there is no homophobia in the book. Claire is out, and while no mention is made of whether Joy is out, she does take her on dates in public and stuff, even after she's famous.

Score: 4 out of 5 stars
Read in: June 20-21
From: Book Outlet
Status: give away eventually

Cover notes: I like the hardcover (which I have) book's purple cover better than the paperback's blue cover. The font is fantastic; lightning bolts and hearts are the letter's holes and sometimes legs, which is perfect for the subject matter. The superheroes are on top of the word "Super", while the girls gaze up at their paramours: Claire lovingly and Bridget exasperatedly. I like that Claire is holding her notebook, but the paintbrushes Bridgette is holding aren't her medium (I don't like the splashes of paint on her jumper; if she did paint she would totally cover her regular cute clothes). Bridgette makes intricate paper sculptures; she doesn't paint. It's an important plot point in the book! They gave Claire red hair when it's said to be purple (with an undercut) in the book. This book cover is fairly neutral, if you're worried about being seen reading a gay book; it will appear to the casual cishet observer that Claire is gazing up at Girl Power in a hero worship way, not a gay way.

Trigger warnings for this book: teen girl is stalked and grossly touched/sniffed by creepy adult man, kidnapping, teen girl grabbed and has her hair set on fire by adult man, violence, misogyny, online trolling/hate directed at teen girl, a character's hand is broken (sound mentioned), blood, injuries, verbal abuse of teen girl by strangers, obsessive parasocial relationships with celebrities

April-June 2016 books

I have been so lazy with reading lately. My brain is tired when I get home from work, so I procrastinate on my towering to-read list.

Miss Match by Catherine Avril Morris. Free Kindle ebook, early April
Another lame trope-y chicklit romance. I was pretty irritated that the leading lady's friends hired a "romance expert" to basically seduce her without her knowledge and consent, and the friends are never made to see how awful and inappropriate that was; instead, the protagonist apologizes to her friends for being mad at first! (She and the romance expert fall in love for real, of course.) I should stop reading taming of the shrew type stories. 3/5

The Lamp of Darkness by Dave Mason & Mike Feuer. Free Nook ebook, mid-April
This is Biblical historical fiction about Elijah, Ahab and Jezebel from the perspective of a young shepherd boy/musician that is told like fantasy, so I LOVED IT. The authors are rabbis so they definitely know their story and its historical context. This was so good I want to buy a physical copy as well as read the next book(s). 4.5/5

Kahlo by ?. Physical purchased book, lateish April

This is a biography of Frida Kahlo (forgot to get the author's name) with full-color illustrations of many of her paintings and sketches. It's in Spanish, so it took me a little longer to read. I bought this when I was in Mexico with my family at this fancy hotel/restaurant/store called Sanborns, and I read it throughout our vacation there. I wanted more of an analysis of her art and its themes instead of just a straight telling of her life story, but whatever. I got a good deal of that from a scholarly article I got off JSTOR ages ago about the Aztec imagery in Frida Kahlo's paintings, which I read on the plane on the way to Mexico. I was especially troubled at the lack of references, endnotes, or even a bibliography. Where did you get your sources from, person? What if we want to read more? 3.9/5

Safe People: How to Find Relationships That Are Good for You and Avoid Those That Aren't

 by Henry Cloud and John Townsend. "Gift" physical book, lateish April-early May

My mom bought this book "for me" (really so she could justify buying it to read), and I also read it during my Mexico trip after I finished the Kahlo biography. Cloud & Townsend are Christian psychologists who have written tons of relationship and self-help books separately and together, and I've read several of them thanks to my mom's buying habit. This one was good but a bit 2real at times (I had to fight back tears at the airport, which was kind of embarrassing. Luckily I was sick so I could blame that for the snuffling). 4/5

The Lake House by Kate Morton. Library book, early-mid May

My bookclub chose this book for May, and I thought at first that it was a book the Sandra Bullock rom-com was based on and was prepared for a chick lit book with some time-traveling. It's actually a sweeping mystery set in England that bounces between various characters' views and flashbacks in the "present day" (1990s), 1890s, 1930s and 1940s. I actually already read a book by this author, and I found both books super similar: they have a precocious bookish heroine with authorial aspirations who falls in love with an older guy who encourages her writing so she thinks he likes her back and kisses him and it's super awkward and she and we think it's one of the big mysteries but it isn't, a classic children's book (which doesn't exist in our world) based on a real girl and/or real themes in the book that somehow ties in to the mystery, spouses cheating on each other, mysteries centering around a particular well-loved house that is almost a character in its own right and is later abandoned due to said mystery, guilt, WWII, sisters and their relationships, flashbacks between characters and between the past and the present day, the present day is the 1990s otherwise I guess research would be too easy and the book would be over too soon, there is a historical protagonist and a modern protagonist who are intertwined somehow... Really a lot of similarities. She's a good writer so it puzzled me a bit that the books have so many similar elements. I liked this book way more than The Distant Hours since this one actually had a happy ending. 4/5

Wonder Woman Vol.3: Iron by Brian Azzarello, illustrated by Cliff Chiang. Library comic book, late June
I wanted to read a Wonder Woman comic since I don't think I ever had and I don't want to be a fake geek girl. I usually hate reading series out of order but this one was the first one the library had. Basically this series is, what if Wonder Woman's dad was Zeus? Fantastic. I ordered the rest from the library so I can read the whole series. 4.5/5

The Batman of Songs

I'm a sucker for freebies, and free song downloads from iTunes are no exception. I usually download the ones I like every week (I think the free songs change every Monday). Last week I downloaded a single called "Come Back Down" by Greg Laswell featuring Sara Bareilles. It's a great pop song, catchy and rather anthemic, but it's kind of jarring when you listen to the words. The official music video handily features the lyrics, so go ahead and watch it:


The song's message can basically be summed up as, "Sack UP, ho! Get your act together! Look at your life; look at your choices." It's interesting that this song is so blunt; most pop songs feature watered down optimism and meaningless positive platitudes. I rather value this song's honesty.
So why do I call this the Batman of songs? It's awesome and popular with audiences, but it's kind of a downer when you think about it. Also, this is not the song people want, but the song they deserve.