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A review by ihateprozac
Not Your Sidekick by C.B. Lee
3.0
Not Your Sidekick tells the story of Jess, a bisexual Chinese-Vietnamese-American teen, who’s the seemingly untalented middle child in a family full of superheroes and geniuses. In this near-future version of America, solar flares kickstarted genetic mutations that gave rise to superheroes with superhuman abilities. As consolation for being the only normie in a family full of heroes, Jess takes a mysterious internship at Monroe Industries - which happens to be a front for the town villains! Jess works alongside her crush, Abby, and a mysterious mecha-suited boss named M, and soon learns that the hero/villain dichotomy is not as simple as it seems, and that something larger is at play here.
If I were to describe this in a few words, it’d be “Sky High, but queer as fuck”. It’s a super cute, fun adventure that reads just like a comic book, but with the bonus points of bisexual representation, queer representation, trans representation, QPOC representation, and on-page talk about pronouns! It’s such a breath of fresh air not just in YA fiction, but in superhero fiction; a world that too often caters to and only represents cishet white male dudebros.
That being said, the story is lacking in detail, description, and introspection. Everything just kind of happens; it doesn’t happen with any feeling. I don’t want the characters to “say” something, I want them to exclaim, to cry, to shudder, to shout, and to spit. I don’t want the characters to just look at each other, I want them to look incredulous, to look adoringly, to glare, to ogle, to sneer, to grimace. Each scene felt like it was an outline, waiting to have meat packed onto its bones.
Whether it’s due to the lack of detail or just the nature of CB Lee’s writing, I absolutely flew through this book. It clocks in at less than 300 pages and I smashed through it in a couple of hours - hence why I’m probably not more disgruntled at the lack of detail. Had this been a 500 page opus, I don’t think I’d rate it as favourably as I did, nor would I be overly keen to pick up the next one. But it was a super cute read on a sunny Sunday afternoon where I wanted something I could fly through and not think too much about.
Overall: While Not Your Sidekick is a little rudimentary and inelegant in its writing, I am stoked as hell that this queer AF superhero book exists! It’s so nice to see bisexual own-voices writing in the superhero genre, giving queer POC femmes a voice in a genre dominated by cishet white male characters (or characters written for the cishet white male gaze). I’m excited to see CB Lee’s writing grow, and am excited to see the superhero genre get that bit queerer.
If I were to describe this in a few words, it’d be “Sky High, but queer as fuck”. It’s a super cute, fun adventure that reads just like a comic book, but with the bonus points of bisexual representation, queer representation, trans representation, QPOC representation, and on-page talk about pronouns! It’s such a breath of fresh air not just in YA fiction, but in superhero fiction; a world that too often caters to and only represents cishet white male dudebros.
That being said, the story is lacking in detail, description, and introspection. Everything just kind of happens; it doesn’t happen with any feeling. I don’t want the characters to “say” something, I want them to exclaim, to cry, to shudder, to shout, and to spit. I don’t want the characters to just look at each other, I want them to look incredulous, to look adoringly, to glare, to ogle, to sneer, to grimace. Each scene felt like it was an outline, waiting to have meat packed onto its bones.
Whether it’s due to the lack of detail or just the nature of CB Lee’s writing, I absolutely flew through this book. It clocks in at less than 300 pages and I smashed through it in a couple of hours - hence why I’m probably not more disgruntled at the lack of detail. Had this been a 500 page opus, I don’t think I’d rate it as favourably as I did, nor would I be overly keen to pick up the next one. But it was a super cute read on a sunny Sunday afternoon where I wanted something I could fly through and not think too much about.
Overall: While Not Your Sidekick is a little rudimentary and inelegant in its writing, I am stoked as hell that this queer AF superhero book exists! It’s so nice to see bisexual own-voices writing in the superhero genre, giving queer POC femmes a voice in a genre dominated by cishet white male characters (or characters written for the cishet white male gaze). I’m excited to see CB Lee’s writing grow, and am excited to see the superhero genre get that bit queerer.