I understand wanting to write a superhero story that subverts the expectations of the genre. The superhero genre is always fun to watch and read, but it can get predictable. The Boys is one of my favorite examples of this, making superheroes owned and created by a corporation. They’re not actual heroes; they’re just people with super abilities and huge egos. The villains are mostly normal people who were victims of those corporate monsters.

Unfortunately, I don’t think this book does the concept very well. I thought the premise was interesting: a hench who becomes permanently disabled after an altercation with a hero and then starts working for the top supervillain to take revenge against superheroes. I thought the book would explore how heroes can overlook ordinary people and collateral damage while fighting bigger threats, and the complex grey area where heroes accidentally create their own villains. I thought Anna would be a villain protagonist. Unfortunately everything about this book annoyed me, everything is just so very surface level.

The book basically blames the heroes for everything that goes wrong when fighting villains. Anna criticizes them for the injuries to henchmen and occasional civilians, but what about the villains??? They’re allowed to rob, kidnap, and kill people as violently as they want, while the heroes are expected to save everyone AND fight villains without using violence??? How is that supposed to work??

One of the reasons Anna became disabled was because Supercollider was careless while fighting a minor villain. But Anna was in that situation because she was a hench for THAT supervillain, who was literally kidnapping a child and was about to cut off that child’s finger. Her boss was the one who dragged her into that situation and then abandoned her (and the other henchs) to fight Supercollider. As far as I’m concerned, what happened to her was simply a consequence of her own job.

She was called The Auditor because she calculated the costs of the damages caused by the heroes, and everyone praised her for it. But what about the people saved by the heroes? The good things they did? Why are all the costs blamed on the heroes and not the villains who caused them?

I kept waiting for someone to challenge Anna’s views, but the other characters always praised and supported her. It would’ve been great if she were a full-on villain, because then I could just read on without a care, but Anna is just… so mid. She’s not that evil but she’s not that good either so she ended up being underwhelming and very mid.

She’s supposed to be smart and manipulative, but I wasn’t impressed by any of her strategies against the heroes. Everyone around her acts like she’s the first person to ever think of them, and I feel like the book makes everyone else stupid just to make Anna look smart, which is one of the cheapest ways to write an intelligent character.

Overall, this is really just a lesser and more annoying version of The Boys TV series.

Unfortunately, I’m someone who doesn’t like fanfiction-turned-published novels. Like, this is technically somebody else’s work that you just changed a little bit here and there for. Somebody else already did the proper work of creating the characters and their dynamics, and you just change the names to publish it.

I’m also not a big fan of the setting. It’s set in the real world and references modern pop culture, yet it’s basically a utopia. Everyone is kind, talks about therapy, is in touch with their emotions and masculinity in hockey team. I can understand why people like it because it’s “sweet” and “cozy,” but I personally don’t. I just kept thinking about how that’s not how adults (or people in general) talk or act, and how unrealistic it is, so I ended up getting annoyed.

I’m also not a fan of random characters getting POV chapters. Why did Jeff and Matt need POV chapters?? It’s so unnecessary, just keep them as side characters.

This whole book just seems like the perfect book for the Tumblr audience, but maybe I’ve just outgrown this kind of YA book.