The Extraordinaries is a fun, modern YA fantasy – funny and heartwarming in places and serious in others. The characters are cute, the LGBT representation fantastic, and I suspect modern teenagers will enjoy it. The story and setting are unoriginal – I predicted every single plot twist miles before it happened, and I’ve read several similar books before – but that doesn’t prevent it being a good read.
The main character, Nick, is sixteen and just entering Junior Year of High School in Nova City – very similar to any city in the US, except there are superheroes, known as Extraordinaries. Nick is a fan. In fact, he’s such a big fan of the city’s Extraordinary – known as Shadow Storm – that he spends his time writing self-insert fanfiction and owns a pillow with Shadow Storm’s face on it. Nick dreams of being rescued by his idol and subsequently joining him on his adventures to save the city. Of course, that’s not precisely what happens.
Nick is a sweet, naive, oblivious sixteen-year-old. He also has ADHD – this is exceptionally well written and one of the highlights of the book. With his well-known superhero crush and constant stream of random thoughts, he isn’t the most popular guy in school – but he has his own tight-knit group of friends. His relationships with them were brilliant and another strength, even if Jazz and Gibby felt more like caricatures than characters at times. LGBT rep is always brilliant, but the butch can-kick-your-ass girl and her head-cheerleader girlfriend was almost too cliché.
Seth, Nick’s best friend since they met on the swings ten years ago, is equally adorable. Orphaned at a young age in a train crash, Seth has always been a strange, chubby kid who struggled to make friends – but in him, Nick found the patient listener he needed, and Seth found the human connection he craved. I loved them – their relationship was often painfully awkward, and both of them are ridiculously oblivious, but it was pure and adorable. The reactions of everyone else around them were also perfect – their disbelief and frustration matched mine as I was reading perfectly.
Owen, Nick’s sort-of-ex and now sort-of-friend, had the potential to be an interesting character, but too much was left a mystery. I never quite knew what to think. Hopefully future books will develop him further – his arc in this didn’t feel complete.
The setting was a completely standard US city, plus superheroes, giving a thoroughly contemporary feel – except perhaps for the highly limited number of news channels, and the way everyone watched them instead of Netflix. Why the superheroes were left to continue unchecked was never explained, nor why they existed – or how. For what is essentially a YA fantasy romance, this doesn’t matter too much, but I would have liked a little more explanation.
Overall, this is a solid enough read. It’s great fun, with laugh out loud moments, and the characters are adorable – but the story is predictable, and characters just the wrong side of cliché. With the exception of Nick and Seth – who were themselves clichés – none of them were expounded on enough to take them into 3D territory, which left the novel a little lacking. But for younger teenagers, this will likely be a story to love.
Published by Hodder & Stoughton
Hardback: 14 July 2020
neverimitate 