Yzabel / June 2, 2018

Review: Please Don’t Tell My Parents You Believe Her

Please Don't Tell My Parents You Believe HerPlease Don’t Tell My Parents You Believe Her by Richard Roberts

My rating: [rating=2]

Blurb:

Middle school supervillain Penny Akk has defeated every challenge thrown against her. She has bested heroes, villains, weirdos who can’t make up their minds, robots, aliens, friends, rivals, enemies, natural disasters, secret admirers, and her own shyness.

Now she has only one opponent left.

Her own super power.

…and the other Penny who stole it.

Review:

[I received a copy of this book from the publisher.]

The final instalment in this series, or at least for Penny’s arc. The story picks up right after the previous volume’s cliffhanger, with Penny having to contend with her family and friends not believing ‘the evil robot’. One can only imagine the pain and sadness this is for a kid. She didn’t spend time moping, which I definitely liked, and she kept acting and taking the matter into hands, finding people to help her, getting to know her other friends better (like Marcia and Cassie), and revealing both to the readers and to herself that she’s made of tough stuff… But when she started writing letters to her parents, pretending she was at ‘supervillain camp’, that’s when I knew where the hurt had gone.

Also, Gerty. That character was pretty fun.

While I enjoyed it as a light read, though, I must admit I was disappointed about several things, such as:

– The way Penny comes clear to her parents. That was so anticlimactic and infuriating, since this was, after all, quite a stake for Penny.

– Ray and Claire are even more out of the way than in the previous volume. Sure, Penny gets other sidekicks, and doesn’t have to do everything alone, but… That was really a let-down. I like the original Inscrutable Machine trio, and seeing it in that state was heart-breaking.

– Half of the book felt like a filler, which disappointed me even more that if not for that, there would’ve been room and time for meaningful character development.

– No one seemed to stop and consider the Machine’s role for more than a second. When it was obvious that it held the key to who the original Penny was.

– The ending was… predictable. It wraps things up nicely, however I can’t tell it held any surprise for me.

Overall, this is a series I’d still recommend, but I wish it had ended on the same quality as the first book.

Yzabel / June 26, 2017

Review: Please Don’t Tell My Parents I Have A Nemesis

Please Don't Tell My Parents I Have A NemesisPlease Don’t Tell My Parents I Have A Nemesis by Richard Roberts

My rating: [rating=3]

Blurb:

It’s summertime for supervillains!

Or maybe not, because for Penelope Akk, there is still one foe she has yet to defeat: her own reputation as Bad Penny. It’s been a fun ride: fighting adult heroes, going to space, and inspiring the rest of her school to open up about their own powers.

Sooner or later, that ride has to end, and with school out of the way Penny is hatching a mad scheme to end it on her own terms. Will that go smoothly? Of course not. Penny’s left too many unsolved problems behind her already, like ghosts, seriously crazy friends, and angry little girls from Jupiter.

One by one, they’ll have to be dealt with before she can do battle with herself. She’d better hurry, because her parents are closing in. Whether she confesses or not, this time they will find out her secret.

Review:

[I received a copy of this book from the publisher.]

I remember being disappointed with the previous instalment. This one, although not as strong as the first volume in the series, I felt was better—probably because it deals less with slice-of-life/school moments, and tackles more seriously the matter of Penny wanting to come clean to her parents about the Inscrutable Machine. Well, ‘seriously’ being a tentative word, because her plan is, as Ray and Clair put it, just crazy enough to actually work. (On the other hand, well, it’s a plan crafted by a 14-year-old mad scientist, soooooo… why not!)

… And you can sense this plan smells like Eau de Backfiring from the moment it is formulated, and can’t help but wait for the train wreck to happen, and… I admit, I liked that part of the plot. Even though it didn’t cover the whole book (too bad). In a twisted way, the mistakes Penny keeps committing seem to me like they’re actually her subconscious, or perhaps her power, acting her to act: she wants to be a hero, she regularly tries to help people and do good deeds, but somehow she seems more cut out to be an ambiguous hero at best. More suited to be filed with the likes of Lucyfar than Marvelous.

(I’m also thinking that IF this is what the author is indeed going for, then it might also explain the Audit’s lack of insight about her daughter: maybe the Audit does know, has known for a while, and isn’t saying anything because she wants Penny to realise by herself what her true decision will have to be.)

What I regret:

– Like in the previous two books, we don’t see much of Ray and Claire, both in terms of development and sidekicking (summer camp kind of gets in the latter’s way). Hopefully the last volume will take care of the whole ‘Ray’s family’ issue. Or maybe it’s not worth it? I don’t know, I’ve always felt there was something off to them, and not merely as in ‘they don’t like superheroes/villains so I can’t tell them I’m one now.’

– The coming back of a friendtagonist: I was expecting it, I wanted to see it happen, yet at the same time, the way it was dealt with felt like a plot device. Kind of ‘this character is needed to help Penny build one specific machine, and then will be unneeded for the rest of the book.’ Meh.

What I’m in between about:
– The ending. It is fairly depressing, and a cliffhanger… yet at the same time, I’m glad the whole thing wasn’t solved just like that, since it would’ve been too simple, and… ‘too clean?’

Conclusion: Not on par with volume 1, howeve it did leave me with a better impression than volume 3.