Reviewed by Stephen K
TITLE: Struck
SERIES: The Lightning Project #1
AUTHOR: Victoria Kinnaird
PUBLISHER: Deep Hearts YA
LENGTH: 210 Pages
RELEASE DATE: May 28 , 2021
BLURB:
Ethan Thorn is a lot of things. The heroic type isn’t one of them.
A hacker with a tendency to self-isolate too much, Ethan is desperate for something different in life, something more exciting than the sleepy town of Orchard Side. Being “Struck” and waking up in a secret government facility in a New York skyscraper certainly wasn’t what he had in mind.
Against his will, he’s now part of The Lightning Project, a government program to turn average teens into crime-fighting superheroes. As much as Ethan hates it, there’s one thing he secretly loves about it: Adam, the project leader. He’s a sweet, shy, boy-next-door type, certainly not someone Ethan should be interested in. Nonetheless, Ethan finds himself drawn to Adam.
Faced with a devastating secret from The Lightning Project’s past, Ethan comes up against the most difficult choice of his entire life. Does he take his place as a member of the team, accept his destiny as a superhero, and bury the part of him that questions authority at every turn? Or does he go back to the life he hated in Orchard Side?
REVIEW:
This book is the first in a YA adventure series. While there is a M/M romance, it’s NOT the center of this tale. Also since this is aimed at a YA audience, the sex is mostly off-screen.
Told in first person from the POV of wise-cracking Ethan, this book is a bit more of a bumpy ride than I’d like. Sometimes hyperbole is the enemy of clarity. I also found the one non-binary character’s continually being referred to as “they” a bit disorienting. “They” still generally implies plural in my mind. While I think that the author was deliberately trying to make a point in that regard, it felt a bit artificial. It pulled me “out” of the story more than was really necessary. For example “The sound of K slapping their hand over my mouth echoed around our abandoned subway car.” The sentence could have just as easily been written as “The sound of K slapping a hand over my mouth echoed around our abandoned subway car.” There’d have been no loss of clarity and certainly less potential for confusion.
It might also be my old fashioned sensibilities, or perhaps a touch of world weariness, but this tale felt a bit too bleak for my liking. A group of teen superheros that have been created without their consent by a government agency unconcerned that the mortality among new converts is disturbingly high? Of course, it’s not wise to expect sunshine and rainbows when your main character has been declared dead by the end of chapter one. Ethan’s a likable enough guy and Adam as his love interest seems incredibly sweet in a doomed puppydog way. But the way they kept layering on the grief for Adam seemed a bit too much like schadenfreude.
While some may really get into the birth of this new superhero series populated by snarky teens, it will most likely be enjoyed by those used to sterner stuff than I am.
RATING: 
BUY LINK: