Sidekick: The Misadventure's of the New Scarlet Knight

Bobby Baines is in high school, which is bad enough. When his hero, Scarlet Knight, dies, Bobby is forced to take up his mantel. Only Scarlet Knight never had to deal with eking out a passing grade in math, keeping his fellow sidekicks in check, or stopping a giant squid from bearing down on his school and crushing everyone inside. After all, Bobby Baines is no super hero, he’s a Sidekick!

I adore this novel! I love superheroes, and everything that it entails, so I was a little worried when I picked this up for the Month9Publications blog tour. I was worried that it wouldn’t stand up to my expectations, or that it would just let me down.

Pab, you’re awesome. I don’t know what caught me first, but I loved the humor, and I’ll admit it, I was pretty much sold after the Seven Brides for Seven Brothers reference. One thing that I liked about the book, was that it didn’t push the stereotypes away, but it didn’t exactly follow them either.
It’s kind of like how cartoons perpetually make Vikings wear horned hats, when they really didn’t do that it history.

He offered enough familiarity for newcomers to super-stuff, but diverged enough for people looking for something new. The ending was surprising (a nice bit of foreshadowing in the beginning!) and one of my favorite parts was when Bobby had a complete emotional breakdown. (That sounds totally sadistic, but let me explain!)

It was human. It wasn’t over-emotional like a lot of YA novels try to make boys…Bobby went through a lot, worked through it, and finally it just reached the breaking point of his self-control. He sought comfort in his fellow sidekick Sarah and last but not least, this book had a really satisfying ending. (Which I won’t tell you about. Because, who do you think I am anyway?)

The bottom line, is that I'm really excited about Pab coming on to the scene of YA. We have the same kind of mentality when it comes to societal expectations (I reject your reality and substitute my own. ;) I'll definitely be watching out for Pab in the future!