A review by lezreadalot
Not Your Sidekick by C.B. Lee

4.0

Powerless she may be, but she's not helpless.

This was incredibly adorable, feel-good and just a really fun time. When it started out I thought it was going to be a kind of fluffy superhero/science fiction story, but it took some serious turns and the plot went in a direction that I can definitely click with. And the little romance was just so cute!!!

This is one of those plots where the reader is deliberately set up to discover/realise a few things before the main character does. That can sometimes be frustrating, but here it was just charming, and made me smile so much. This is a superhero book, and I don't always like hidden/secret identity stuff; it can stress me out. But this was written in such a fun, low-angst way that perfectly fit the tone of the world, but still left room for seriousness in this dystopic, post-disaster world. I really loved the ways this talked about fitting in as the child of refugees, feeling like an imposter within and without the superhero world, and all the general world-building around the disasters and their aftermath was really interesting. I loved Jess so much; she was such a brave, determined, relatable main character. And I really can't say it enough: the romance with Abby was freaking adorable.

I have to admit, the plot was shaky in a lot of places, and as interesting as the worldbuilding was, there are so many holes in it that it wouldn't take much for it to all come crashing down. And there was one plot point that I was kind of annoyed about. But all told, this was wonderful. I listed to the audiobook as read by Emily Woo Zeller, who always does amazing voice work.

I'm looking forward to carrying on with the series!