"Most superhero stories start with a meteor shower or a nasty insect bite, but mine actually starts with a kiss. Whether it was a kiss of life or a kiss of death I still haven't decided, but it was, surprisingly, a really good kiss. Not that I'd ever tell him that."
I will admit, with a beginning like that, I did not have the highest expectations.
Good thing I didn't. This book is shaky, at best.
With a superhero premise and a girl that I knew would inevitably hate herself because of her said powers, I knew I would be dealing with sighs of frustration and the threat of throwing my Kindle across the room.
Summary:
The entire "superhero" power plot is weak.
The main character, Jamie Baker, was driving home after some sort of small town pageant when a fertilizer truck tipped over. It made her car run into a electrical pole which then turned her into a green haired, yellow eyed girl. She became gifted with the power of heightened senses and electrical hands.
She does not embrace her powers, she in fact, loathes them. Jamie only uses them to get to the Grand Canyon and other far away places in ten minutes - where then she broods over her powers - and then comes home to brood more.
The entire book is a back and forth between Jamie and the main love interest on kissing and then retreating away. The big conspiracy on someone else finding out her secret powers gets solved in the second to last chapter in two pages and a poor fight scene.
Characters:
Jamie Baker
She is, bluntly, a dumbass.
For one of her fears being that she doesn't want to end up in some science lab and become an experiment, she sure puts herself in danger a lot. She tells the main love interest about her powers after almost electrifying him on multiple occasions. She saves a guy from getting crushed from a statue, where she loses one of her contacts. (Which she wears because of the yellow eyes). She has temper tantrums where she fries the circuits and shakes her house.
Oh yeah, and not to forget, also exposes herself point blank to the reporter that's been following her since the car accident by basically frying all his electrical items in his home.
How she did not end up getting found out is unknown to me.
Honestly I could have possibly let all that go, albeit not lightly, but I could have tried to.
Then, that is, until Jamie decided to not listen to her parents and throw caution to the wind by telling Ryan (said love interest) that she has powers. Why care about exposing your secret when you can have love, right?
"I also decided that I absolutely, positively did not care. This wasn't my father's secret to keep, it was mine, and I could decide who to trust with it. I knew I'd feel a little guilty for defying my dad's wishes, but it surely wouldn't kill me. I wasn't really doing anything wrong, and Ryan's friendship definitely wouldn't be the only secret I'd kept from my parents. Or the worst."
Actually, Jamie. It could kill you.
A father has the right to worry about his daughter being taken away and being tested on like a lab rat.
Jamie puts herself in reckless situations. Nothing she does is based on actual logic. It's all around emotion.
Ryan Miller
I don't know if people actually find that attractive, but I know I don't."Look," he said, "what happened to you was a nightmare. I get that. But you're never going to get over it if you keep pushing people away all the time. Why don't you just give me a chance? I know part of you wants to."
He was almost pleading with me at this point, and I was surprised by his intensity, but after a second his mouth turned up into a crooked smile, and he said, "Haven't met a girl yet that doesn't."
There's a difference between being a guy who borders the line between funny and rude and just an asshole. Unfortunately, Ryan was just an asshole.
He was somewhat racist, egotistical, and came off whiny. I did not find him a likable main love interest.
Cringe. It hurts to read."Well, you're not Asian, and you're not really trying for the Goth look. Not that your hair doesn't look great with those bright green eyes, but it's clearly not your natural color, so why the jet black?"
Romance:
They got together on a bet.
Ryan the quarterback wanted to ask another girl to Homecoming but so did one of his friends. So said friend came up with an idea. Jamie is a loner. If Ryan can kiss her and she kisses him back then he can take said girl to Homecoming.
Of course, Jamie hears this entire conversation because of said powers.
So when Ryan comes over, and tells the truth, Jamie is impressed.
So they kiss. Sparks.
Because of her electricity powers.
But now Ryan is hooked. So the next day and future days in advance he wants to get to know her. Even though they've been going to school together for years. All of sudden, he has to know Jamie. But she ignores him.
That is there relationship.
It was one of the most exceedingly annoying romances I've read in a long time.
Jamie and Ryan would kiss and then she'd ignore him. Then they'd become friends and she'd push him away. She'd accidentally electrocute him while kissing and she'd push him away again. It was an endless cycle of her feeling guilty and pushing him away. Exclude all of that, it's still insta lust and love.
Overall:
This book could have been great. It had a possible superhero plot. Jamie could have accepted her powers, realized she could help people, but instead she hated every minute of her powers and spent the bulk of the book hiding from Ryan.
The most Jamie uses her powers for are to go to different places and get refrigerator magnets, and the small two chapters when she practices with Ryan.
She's like a little child who didn't get her way and now whines and hates everyone for it.
The main villain was overrun in two pages. There was no mystery. I didn't care when I found out. I was just hopeful for the book to end. It's not a superhero story. It's a pretty bad love story. That's it.
1/5 STARS
