I enjoyed this book as an adult reader, but would also recommend it for younger readers. I liked the realistic characters, the pacing, the dialogue, and the ending.

It's an odd thing about human brains: we want things that are both familiar and fresh; just like what we already enjoyed, only different. So every story exists on a spectrum from "completely unlike anything you've ever read" to "outright plagiarism".

My personal preference is towards the fresh end, which is mainly why this gets three stars from me. For people who want more Justice League/Teen Titans, with the serial numbers not so much filed off as scratched over a bit, it will, I think, rate much higher.

The author acknowledges this in his afterword, where he points out that it isn't simply the Justice League, but "what if Marvel did the Justice League"? Still, there are details taken directly from DC lore that didn't need to be there for any other reason than to make it more like the source material, like the heroes' logos on their chairs in what might as well have been called the Hall of Justice, or the Nightwing character having a falling out with the Batman character and spending some time fighting crime on his own in another nearby city.

Leaving the lack of originality issue aside (and it was my biggest issue with the book), there were a few other things that I thought could have been improved. Some things are told in summary that could have been in scene: "We get a tip that some human traffickers..." - wait on a second. How does this newly-formed group of teen vigilantes get a tip like that? Who from? How have they developed these contacts? Or the anticlimax where the teen team sets out to defy the registration laws (enforced by both the US government and the UN) because the Superman/Captain America character is a big meanie, and then there's just a bit of bureaucratic process brushed over in a couple of sentences and they're approved; no consequences, no struggle, no fuss. What Marvel did a whole huge crossover event about is slid past as if it was a dog license (in an unusually forgiving city where you don't get fined for not having had one in the first place); something which is presented at first as legally impossible and tangled up in international politics is resolved as if there was a form you fill in and get rubber-stamped.

Then there are a few annoying tropes: the "friend zone"; the big strong guys not being very bright; damaging a device makes it work better.

Other than that, it's a fairly by-the-numbers YA supers story with pleasant enough, but mostly one-dimensional, characters, and not much in the way of a plot. <spoiler>They form the super team; there's brief tension about them doing that goes away almost immediately; there are some Shocking Revelations about people's relationships that are more soap opera than super; a few incidental fights with criminals and supervillains; the team breaks up over very little; then more or less out of nowhere the core super team becomes evil and the rookies, who are a particularly close one-for-one match for their powers, improbably take them down. </spoiler> Meanwhile, there's some teen relationship angst and fast food employment hell that doesn't go anywhere in particular, or relate clearly to any other part of the story.

I look for supers books to bring something new, or at least fresh, to the table; to have high stakes and characters with some depth and weight, with at least the amount of self-awareness and reflection you'd see in a good comic book -preferably more. This was not that book. But if that's not what you're looking for, if you just can't get enough Generic Brand, Compare With: Teen Titans, this could well be for you.

I received a review copy via Netgalley.

Fun and brief superhero tale. I did not read part one, but had no problems with the narrative. Felt a bit like the recent Spider-Man movie and Jason Reynolds' Miles Morales in the gritty, honest portrayal of the anxiety of a teen superhero.