A review by ogbertthenerd
The Extraordinaries by TJ Klune

The bones of this are great, but it’s about 100 pages too long and weirdly preachy? The main character is a teenage boy who says, does, and thinks typical silly teenage boy things but then often goes into diatribes about how he knows that thing was wrong and all the reasons why. It reads like the author is afraid of letting the character make mistakes that might get any kind of pushback from readers (which based on some of these reviews I can’t blame him for). Even stranger, the one area there is no moral grandstanding is around the police, including an out-of-left-field brutality incident that is mostly brushed under the rug, an off-putting running gag about the teens joking that one of the cops is a pedophile, and a lot of “they’re very brave heroes” talk that can only partially be chalked up to the protagonist loving his dad. Almost all of the adult characters share one voice that’s only slightly different from the main teen character’s and the teens definitely have an-adults-idea-of-teens voice. Overall I’m rounding up from three stars because it ends strong and I still enjoyed it, particularly the relationship between Nick and his dad.