Extraordinaries

 You’re a goddamn Extraordinary. Do you know what that makes me? That makes me the clueless comedic relief! I never wanted to be the clueless comedic relief. I’m supposed to be the hero!

  This was a really fun and relatable read. I mean, sometimes I had to look away from the page because of a certain nearly unbearable degree of secondhand embarrassment for the MC... but that's because I've pretty much recognized myself in some moments. The kind of moments that my brain loves to play on repeat at 2 AM when I'm trying to sleep. Anyway, given that Nicky gets to save the day and have a happy ending and be generally surrounded by people who love him for who he is, even the secondhand embarrassment was surprisingly cathartic. :)    I'm not sure if it's me being genre-savvy or if the plot twists were intentionally written to be as transparent as possible. They were certainly extremely transparent for me, and that's where a lot of the fun from this book came from: I generally knew what was going to happen long before the MC did, but I had no idea how it was going to happen and what was needed to make the MC aware that it's been happening all alone. It's a quality I'm used to finding (and absolutely loving) in fanfic more often than in published books. It was awesome to see it here. Also, fitting, since the MC is a fic writer. (Although I do hope that "best writer in the fandom" is Nicky's own assessment of his talents and not a hard fact. I mean, it's an awesome assessment of one's talents to have! More power to Nicky! It's just that after spending close to 20 years reading fanfic, I know it can be better, okay?)   There are plenty of laugh-out-loud moments here, a lot of raw feeling, and the cutest friends-to-lovers slow, slow burn ever. Also, I'm so here for this awesome all-queer cast and all the found family goodness. One thing I can always trust T.J. Klune with: to write a perfect pick-me-up story. I absolutely can't wait to read the sequel!   One thing that did make me lower the number of stars just a tiny bit was the presence of what I can only call copaganda. The MC's dad is an awesome character. So is Officer Rookie. I wouldn't want them to be absent from the story in any way. But I could use a bit less of a general "cops are the true heroes and they could have been doing their jobs even better if the Extraordinaries quit messing around the city" feel. It reads weird in today's landscape, and I'm not even American. 

DNF page 111 (27% in).
At first I like the lighthearted tone, but then what was initially sweet started feeling cloying: intense without any heft to it, and no relief. Most moments which seemed like they should have emotional weight and importance just didn’t land for me. Scenes which could have been intense were diffused with humor or antics almost instantly. I like humorous tones sometimes, but when nothing is taken seriously the jokes stop feeling funny. I disliked every scene with the MC’s dad (the few that there were). The MC is oblivious about pretty much everything, and it made me want to yell at the book to get, just, anything about what was going on. I stopped trusting that it would handle anything well, and the way the dad controls the MC's medication didn't feel good.