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ajohnson895's review
5.0
I am so glad that I picked this as my first read in April! I love YA books, and this one does NOT disappoint.
As far as style goes, McDermott's is pretty laid back. It reads like a YA book. There's no long drawn out, flowery prose, but that's perfectly acceptable. Instead of focusing on making the words nice, we instead get a really solid storyline and setting. The world that McDermott has built is both well-thought out and very well-rounded. It's a broad setting, and I'm here for it.
The pacing was a big sluggish at the start. I couldn't get past how silly it all sounded. But the words were so gosh-darn good and lighthearted that I just had to keep going. But after that, it was one punch after another, and it did NOT stop. I was clutching the edge of my seat for the last twenty percent of the book.
But the characters are where McDermott really shines! Julie managed to grab me from the get-go, and I was rooting for her, watching her grow, holding my breath for her—She’s phenomenal. All of the characters have their own role, and they all seamlessly fit together.
My only complaint?
That there’s no sequel. LOL
Full review: https://aejohnsonwrites.wordpress.com/2022/04/11/book-review-50-supra-normal-by-a-s-mcdermott/
As far as style goes, McDermott's is pretty laid back. It reads like a YA book. There's no long drawn out, flowery prose, but that's perfectly acceptable. Instead of focusing on making the words nice, we instead get a really solid storyline and setting. The world that McDermott has built is both well-thought out and very well-rounded. It's a broad setting, and I'm here for it.
The pacing was a big sluggish at the start. I couldn't get past how silly it all sounded. But the words were so gosh-darn good and lighthearted that I just had to keep going. But after that, it was one punch after another, and it did NOT stop. I was clutching the edge of my seat for the last twenty percent of the book.
But the characters are where McDermott really shines! Julie managed to grab me from the get-go, and I was rooting for her, watching her grow, holding my breath for her—She’s phenomenal. All of the characters have their own role, and they all seamlessly fit together.
My only complaint?
That there’s no sequel. LOL
Full review: https://aejohnsonwrites.wordpress.com/2022/04/11/book-review-50-supra-normal-by-a-s-mcdermott/
snappydog's review
4.0
Supra/normal is... kind of refreshing, actually. It's not just a straight-up superhero action movie sort of thing, but nor is it in the gritty deconstructive oeuvre that's perhaps even more popular than Straight Up Superheroes these days. Superheroes (or 'supranormals', or just 'supras' for short) are real, and the world knows it; unfortunately, though, a war involving supras has left the population at large extremely distrustful of those with powers. So it's not The Boys, where supes are real and just the worst people; nor is it Watchmen, in which superheroes are real-ish and maybe the worst people. It's perhaps... if you ever read the CHERUB books, which were about a bunch of teenage spies, it's like that but with superheroes instead of just normal badass humans. Overall, though, it feels pretty original, not just like it's retreading things that have been done too many times already.
Our protagonist is, unbeknownst even to her at the start, a supra, and it turns out that there's a charming little bunch of other teenage supras (I don't usually read any YA, but I think this probably falls into that category) hiding out so that they don't all get imprisoned or executed by the supra-hating regime. The core cast is just the right size; there are enough of them to have interesting group dynamics and be able to solve problems in different ways, but not so many that a reader could lose track. They're all well-defined and likeable, except when they're not supposed to be.
I will say, though, that my two favourite characters in the book deserve better: they're introduced, spend a couple of chapters being the best, and then disappear from the narrative, with only a line or two of dialogue later on to indicate that anyone even remembers that they existed. There's definitely scope for a sequel (or more than one) here, though, so perhaps we'll find out what happened to them in the future.
Anyway, I really liked Supra/normal, and I suspect that people in the more YA-ish age bracket might like it even more; what worked for me will hopefully work for them, too, and any bits to which I was broadly indifferent might well be of some interest to them!
Our protagonist is, unbeknownst even to her at the start, a supra, and it turns out that there's a charming little bunch of other teenage supras (I don't usually read any YA, but I think this probably falls into that category) hiding out so that they don't all get imprisoned or executed by the supra-hating regime. The core cast is just the right size; there are enough of them to have interesting group dynamics and be able to solve problems in different ways, but not so many that a reader could lose track. They're all well-defined and likeable, except when they're not supposed to be.
I will say, though, that my two favourite characters in the book deserve better: they're introduced, spend a couple of chapters being the best, and then disappear from the narrative, with only a line or two of dialogue later on to indicate that anyone even remembers that they existed. There's definitely scope for a sequel (or more than one) here, though, so perhaps we'll find out what happened to them in the future.
Anyway, I really liked Supra/normal, and I suspect that people in the more YA-ish age bracket might like it even more; what worked for me will hopefully work for them, too, and any bits to which I was broadly indifferent might well be of some interest to them!
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