'No one ever said that being a superhero was easy' goes the tag line for this book but thankfully this book was easy to read,

It had me intrigued to start with and hooked after a chapter or two. The author has created an interesting detailed world and introduces you to it with ease. Just the right amount of information is given not too much and when you find yourself questioning something 9 times out of 10 the question is answered almost like the characters know what your thinking. The end was rounded off nicely not rushed and leaves you wanting more

i really hope there are more books to follow and I will be one of the first to read future installments

I'm honestly obsessed with superhero novels and I wish there were more out there that were well written, unique, and as loveable s this novel was. Thank you netgalley for the arc for an honest review. It was such a fun, fast-paced read that I didn't want to end!

I struggled a little to rate Masked. I really loved the premise--the idea that kids with superhero parents grow up training to do the same job, and the clashes that causes with 'real life'--however I never came to truly care about the characters. I wanted to like them, but I couldn't fully connect.

Vada is our heroine and has the predominant POV. Nevertheless, this is written in third person omniscient, so we move in and out of other characters' POVs too. That doesn't worry me when it's done well, but here I wish the author had stuck to the principal characters. There are a couple of scenes when we randomly drop into a secondary character's POV for one paragraph, only to never go into their POV again, suggesting it wasn't necessary to be in their head at all.

The plot idea is typical superhero fare and had plenty of action. That kept me turning the pages despite not caring much about Vada. Overall, the book was reasonably well edited, save for those unnecessary POV hops and a few awkward wording choices, and it set things up for a sequel.

The violence, sex, and questionable morals didn't worry me personally. However, it may not suit everyone and this is definitely a book for older teens; I don't think it suitable for the under 16 market.

In conclusion, I enjoyed it in some ways but had a few reservations. If I had the opportunity to read the next in the series, I would do so, but I wouldn't actively seek it out. A good read--just not one about which I'd rave. 3.5 stars.

Enjoyable read, this story really is only an introduction to the different characters and how they come to be super heroes but it has whet my appetite and I look forward to reading more in this series.

I was recently reading Masked by J.D. Wright. In all honesty, when I started reading the book, I thought it would be another read like all the supernatural based books. I was wrong! Once I started reading, I was unable to put it down for fear of missing what would happen next. The character's quirks made them realistic. The writing is fluid, fast paced, and engaging. J.D. Wright is so descriptive that from the first page you are transported to this fictional city and can actually see the action as it unfolds. I would recommend this book and can't wait to read the next one in the series.

I've been in the mood for superhero fiction lately, but it's hard to find good stuff. Most of it is poorly edited and not especially well executed, and I'm afraid this one isn't an exception.

At first it got the Randy Jackson reaction: It was just OK for me, you know, dogg? I could have overlooked most of the issues - even titanium not being a good conductor of electrical blasts, although the same electrical blasts were destroying creatures made of rock, and even the gradual drift from third person limited into more and more headhopping - but what dropped it down to three stars was the implausible stupidity of the characters.

So let's say you have important information about a wanted supervillain - who he is, that he's even still alive, that kind of thing. And let's say that this supervillain, if not stopped, is going to kill more people, like he already has several times. And let's say that you have contact with a highly effective organisation that has much better resources than you do, many trained agents with lots of experience, and you're a group of late-teenage supers just starting out. And you have no reason to expect that there will be any negative consequences to telling this organisation about this villain, who is, again, killing people and needs to be stopped.

What do you do? Well, of course you agree not to tell them, and to go after him yourselves, and none of you even questions that this is the right thing to do in the circumstances.

Nope, sorry. Blatant stupidity in the service of setting up a sequel gets your sequel left unread.

Apart from that, it was, as I say, OK. A bit more detail about the teenage sex than was needed, maybe, but generally average. There were two black characters, both of whom were tech wizards, which seems to often be the lot of black supers (think John Stewart, John Henry Irons, Cyborg and his father...). It's interesting how this trope, which theoretically is about black people being intelligent, in practice often works out as giving them a subsidiary, supporting role in which they're not expected to protagonise or to need a character arc (which is the case here).

Maybe that's improved upon in the next book. I'll never know, because that one moment of supreme stupidity put me off reading it.

Interestingly, the age range for YA fiction is actually undefined and rather subjective: varying age ranges from 12 to 18 or 15 to early 20s or 18 to 30.

Masked is defined as Upper-YA as it "contains adult language, mild/moderate sexual content, and moderate violence. It may not be appropriate for younger teen readers". Indeed there certainly is profanity, moderate sexual content and it does deal with teenage promiscuity. So I most certainly would not be comfortable with my younger teenage daughters reading this book.

But here is the rub - outside of Masked containing some mature Upper-YA themes, the characters themselves, most of their dialogue and behaviors are decidedly juvenile and more directed towards a younger readership. There is nothing wrong with this in itself, but by virtue of inescapable mature content, the author is caught straddled between two different age markets and thereby missing both. Too mature for the younger readership and too juvenile for the older readership.

Otherwise, I somewhat enjoyed the quirky premise about a girl called Vada and her friends that get to choose their super names on their 18th birthday which then gets registered with S.U.C. (Superheroes UnderCover), a worldwide organisation "dedicated to preventing super occurrences from spilling over into the public and causing mass chaos". Very much in the same vein as M.I.B. protecting humans from the alien scum of the universe.

I voluntarily reviewed an Advance Reader Copy of this book.