Rating: 3/5

Genre: YA… uhhh… Superhero Retelling?

Recommended Age: 14+ (violence, slight sexual content)

Pages: 252

Author Website

Amazon Link to Order the Book

Nah nah nah nah nah nah nah nah nah nah nah nah nah nah BATMAN!!!!!!

I LOVE Batman. I used to stay up late every night when I was little and watch the animated series on TV when I was supposed to be asleep. I grew up with Batman and now I want to know how Batman grew up, so I thought this would be an amazing book to start with in my journey to knowing Batman. This book focuses on newly 18 Bruce Wayne and his misadventures and need for justice. I felt that this book had a really interesting plot and storyline. The love interest was in true Batman fashion (ala evil villain), and the pacing was perfection as well. Also, it’s Batman. That has to make up for some of the bad things in this next paragraph right? RIGHT???

*sigh* This was not Batman. Well, this was not MY Batman. I would have been absolutely fine if Marie Lu made a new Batman, God knows how many times and alternate universes Batman has been apart of, but she didn’t and the end result came out poorly researched and unauthentic. Batman in the lore actual traveled the world and trained with a detective and Lucius, this Batman is just a typical teen without any good backstory. Bruce and Harvey were also not old schoolmates, so the inclusion of him felt odd. Aside from one part in the book, this Harvey did not act like the Harvey I know. Bruce, as a character, was also very uninteresting. He was not developed at all and the author relied on us previously knowing the Batman origin story to fully know what was going on. A lot of people who will read this book may not know Batman’s origin story (or even who he is).

Verdict: The Batman in this story doesn’t feel like the Batman of the lore and a lot of things that go on in this book contradict the lore. However, it was an action packed adventure and if you ignore that this is Batman this book is a lot better.