Not Your Villain

Sidekick Squad Series, Book 2

By: C. B. Lee

Narrated by: JD Jackson

Bells Broussard thought he had it made when his superpowers manifested early. Being a shape-shifter is awesome. He can change his hair whenever he wants, and if putting on a binder for the day is too much, he's got it covered. But that was before he became the country's most wanted villain.

After discovering a massive cover-up by the Heroes' League of Heroes, Bells and his friends Jess, Emma, and Abby set off on a secret mission to find the Resistance.

Meanwhile, power-hungry former hero Captain Orion is on the loose with a dangerous serum that renders meta-humans powerless, and a new militarized robotic threat emerges. Everyone is in danger.

Between college applications and crushing on his best friend, will Bells have time to take down a corrupt government?

Sometimes, to do a hero's job, you need to be a villain.

©2017 C. B. Lee (P)2018 Tantor

Just plain fun!

I have really enjoyed this series so far! The audio narrators are wonderfully cast and I was engaged in the fun, upbeat storytelling from the beginning. If you’re looking for a lighthearted hero story that also deals with some big topics look no further. So so so excited that books like these exist for kids today. I wish I had books that talked about sexuality, pronouns, gender, etc. when I was a kid!

Improvement Over First Book

While the performance is rather lacking as JD Jackson does a great job with all the voices that are non-female/her identifying voices (JD makes them all sound incredibly whiny and just more off than the person who read book 1. That person actually did pretty decent with the guy voices), the story and pacing of this book was much better. There were still places where I felt it was slow but then the pacing picked up around then. Some parts were still predictable but less so than the first one. Overall, this was a better told story and much more interesting than the first book, but I can still appreciate the first book as it set not only the tone but also set the world building up to the point that it needed to be at for this one.

I do plan on either buying the physical copy or the audio book once the third book in the series is available.

disappointing follow-up in a fun series

I wanted tl like this one a ton. One of the most interesting and fun supporting characters from 'not your sidekick' takes center stage, but the book can't tell how much it wants to be recap of the first (about a third of it?) and how much to advance the narrative (not much). very much a story told at you, with lots of frustrating teen moments and foolish protagonist bits to advance the plot, not much of the cleverness and fun we got from the first entry. hoping it finds its feet again.

Skip part 1

Skip the first part of the book, it is a retelling of the events but it does not add to the plot of the story. The rest of the events are interesting and keep you engaged.

Not your villain

Great story, don't love the narrator,and the story doesn't really have a ending, but it has a lot of romance.