Pip has known and liked Sal since childhood he’d supported her when she was being bullied in middle school. There’s not much plot here, but readers will relish the opportunity to climb inside Autumn’s head.Įveryone believes that Salil Singh killed his girlfriend, Andrea Bell, five years ago-except Pippa Fitz-Amobi.

Even secondary characters are well-rounded, with their own histories and motivations. Autumn’s coming-of-age is sensitively chronicled, with a wide range of experiences and events shaping her character. But on August 8, everything changes, and Autumn has to rely on all her strength to move on. In the summer after graduation, Autumn and Finny reconnect and are finally ready to be more than friends. Growing up, Autumn and Finny were like peas in a pod despite their differences: Autumn is “quirky and odd,” while Finny is “sweet and shy and everyone like him.” But in eighth grade, Autumn and Finny stop being friends due to an unexpected kiss. They drift apart and find new friends, but their friendship keeps asserting itself at parties, shared holiday gatherings and random encounters. The finely drawn characters capture readers’ attention in this debut.Īutumn and Phineas, nicknamed Finny, were born a week apart their mothers are still best friends. Klune plays with superhero genre tropes and fan-fiction clichés with the skill of a true fan-completely aware of their ridiculousness but in love with them anyway. Gibby is a butch black lesbian along with her girlfriend, they complete their circle of outcast friends. Nick’s best friend of nearly 10 years, Seth, is a pale, chubby, bisexual boy with thick glasses and baggy clothes. Nick, who is white, is a rising junior with pronounced ADHD, and his character is sympathetic and charmingly hapless in the best of ways readers will root for him to realize all the truths right under his nose, not least of which is his own worth. When Shadow Star foils an attempted mugging, saving Nick and his friend Gibby, Nick nearly makes a complete fool of himself but snags a picture and an autograph that comes with a personalized note mentioning the surname Nick definitely did not tell his hero. Nick knows that saving the city has a price, a lesson learned from his police officer father and his mother, who died in a bank robbery two years ago. Nova City’s resident superhero, Shadow Star, fights his archnemesis, Pyro Storm, and Nick Bell is only a bit obsessed with (and maybe enamored of) him, as evidenced by his extensive fan fiction in which Shadow Star continually rescues Nick’s alter ego, Nate Belen.

A fanboy’s dream becomes reality in this queer, romantic superhero story.

The Extraordinaries by T.J. Klune