Reviewed by Annika
TITLE: The Extraordinaries
SERIES: The Extraordinaries #1
AUTHOR: TJ Klune
NARRATOR: Michael Lesley
PUBLISHER: Macmillan Audio
LENGTH: 12 hours, 56 minutes
RELEASE DATE: July 14, 2020
BLURB:
Some people are extraordinary. Some are just extra. TJ Klune’s YA debut, The Extraordinaries, is a queer coming-of-age story about a fanboy with ADHD and the heroes he loves.
Nick Bell? Not extraordinary. But being the most popular fanfiction writer in the Extraordinaries fandom is a superpower, right?
After a chance encounter with Shadow Star, Nova City’s mightiest hero (and Nick’s biggest crush), Nick sets out to make himself extraordinary. And he’ll do it with or without the reluctant help of Seth Gray, Nick’s best friend (and maybe the love of his life).
REVIEW:
Klune does YA. And he does it brilliantly. This book had many powerful messages, and dealt with many difficult topics, but Klune did it in a positive way. The sadness and angst never felt heavy and the humour had me laughing the afternoon away.
Nick Bell has a not so secret obsession; the extraordinary called Shadow Star. He writes fanfiction and trolls through social media for any mention of his crush. One day he has the (not so) brilliant idea of becoming an extraordinary – not entirely sure how, but he has plans. Fortunately for him he has awesome best friends in Seth, Gibby and Jazz who keeps him from going completely off the deep end – or well they did try. I loved this gay gang, they were fun and happy and didn’t take crap from anyone.
I mentioned powerful messages I a little while ago, and one of the most powerful of all was that you don’t have to have extraordinary superpowers to be extraordinary. We all have the abilities to be heroes in our own way. We don’t need the superpowers or the capes, we only need to be the best versions of ourselves we can be. To help others when we can, to see the people around us and open our eyes to truly see.
So I’m going to contradict myself here, but bear with me. My least favourite thing about this book was Nick (Well, I don’t count the villain. … Or maybe I do… because they had some issues that I won’t go into as to not spoil things for you.). Anyway I didn’t like Nick much, but at the same time Nick was also what made this book so great and I wouldn’t change anything about him. So why didn’t I like him you might wonder. For one he was just so self-absorbed, thinking the world revolved around him, never looking beyond the surface and missing things going on around him. Then again he’s the typical teen in that way and it fit perfectly with the essence of the book. So while I might have wanted to hit him over the head more than once, he was also perfect the way he was, I believed in him and his actions – might not always agree with them, but that’s on me.
Finding a narrator or voice actor who genuinely performed the story and characters like Michael Lesley does is rare. Many narrators differentiate between characters with different voices, they also add feelings, but Lesley takes it a few steps further. He makes you believe he actually is that hormonal teenage boy obsessed with extraordinaries… and I don’t mean that in the creepy way it sounded. I don’t think I’ve listened to a narrator that truly lives in the moments like Leslie does, and he takes the listener with him on the crazy ride.
I also think that Lesley and Klune are a match made in heaven, and I don’t mean that romantically. Klune has a particular way of writing and a special brand of humour and characters, and it’s something Lesley just gets. He brings it to life in a way that few narrators could. Klune was born to create these kinds of stories, be they contemporary, paranormal or YA and Leslie was born to narrate them. They are a perfect match for the stories they create and perform, and I can’t wait to see what else they will bring.
Highly recommended.
RATING: 
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