Rating: WARTY!
Read pretty decently by Steven Boyer who actually does sound almost like he could be the character narrating it, this first person PoV story was, refreshingly, not nauseating. Unfortunately, the novel itself was not very entertaining. I was most impressed by how profoundly dumb, sadistic, and all-around obnoxious the main characters were, and this is the reason I did not find this to be a worthy read.
The basic plot revolves around Jacob. Two of the three main teen characters in this novel are known by their first initial for reasons unexplained, so Jacob is 'J'. Ophelia is 'O'. Milo doesn’t get an initial. Jacob is coming back to school after some time off because his guardian was killed in a car accident. I suspected that Jacob was the one driving. After the accident, he not only discovers he has a super power - invulnerability - but also that there's a "pretty" new girl in school. More on that last issue anon.
Right before the crash, Jacob's guardian tells him, " You are indestructible" and so Jacob became so, he later learns. He also learns that if he says this to another person, or even thinks it, then they take on that power, and Jacob loses it, but he can recall it if he chooses. His new friend Ophelia, with whom Jacob ridiculously indulges in instadore, is a complete jerk, and suddenly starts managing Jacob like he's her protégé. She starts treating his power like it’s her power, and demanding that Jacob turn it over to her on various occasions and without any prior notice. On one occasion, her demand for it during an apartment fire means that Jacob is unable to loan it to Milo, who is then in trouble from the trope school bully and one of his cronies.
Ophelia pretty much takes over all super-power-related activity, including an incessant push to test the limits of it, even after those evidently non-existent limits are well known. She's relentless, selfish, and a borderline psychopath, yet this fails to prevent Jacob from blindly falling for her and she for him after two or three days. Pathetic. On that score, and I've gone into this business before, whereby writers, both male and female, obsess on looks, particularly with female characters, to the point where it not only seems like it's the only trait the character has, but that it’s the only trait that's worth having if you're female.
It was sickening to read how often Jacob goes to 'pretty' to pigeon-hole Ophelia, and not to some other, deeper or more enduring trait. Maybe that actually is the only thing she's got going for herself. I guess he couldn't choose 'smart' because Ophelia evidently wasn't. Neither was Jacob for that matter. At one point, she stabs Jacob with a pencil to test his power, and Jacob complains that she's given him lead poisoning. She responds that they don't use lead any more in pencils. Excuse me, but they never did! When it’s employed with regard to pencils, the word 'lead' has nothing to do with the metal.
The bully, Ethan, is weird, because he starts out like he's a rather obnoxious but harmless friend, and then he morphs into this sad bully without any good reason for the change. It didn’t work. I'm becoming really tired of reading school stories where there's unmitigated and unpunished bullying. It’s a pathetic cliché and it needs to end, as do love triangles and parent-less high schoolers. These tropes are tired and un-inventive and any novel which uses them without at least trying to put some sort of a twist on it needs to be automatically one-starred. We readers deserve better than this.
I can't recommend this story because it really wasn't a story in any meaningful sense. It went nowhere. It felt more like it was a short story written by a middle-grade school kid the night before it was due to be handed in.
