[I received an electronic review copy of this book from Netgalley and Marvel Press in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.]
Summary
Nadia Van Dyne – the Unstoppable Wasp – was stolen from her father, Hank Pym, before she was born. Her mother was kidnapped while pregnant and killed, and Nadia was raised in the Red Room. But now she’s free. She’s with her step-mother, Janet Van Dyne, and she runs a science lab called G.I.R.L. – Genius In action Research Labs. Nadia runs the lab out of Pym Laboratories and hopes it will convince SHIELD to recognize and encourage more female scientists.
Nadia’s training, her personality, and her bipolar disorder make her pretty driven. And when she’s struggling, she can take on too many things at once and become a workaholic. To help, she takes her meds, goes to therapy, and her friends keep an eye on her. Also to help, Janet gives her a virtual assistant – VERA.
VERA reminds Nadia to get enough sleep and take her meds. It also helps her do research and track her projects. She even gets to meet VERA’s creator, Margaret Hoff. But despite all of her productivity, Nadia is soon feeling estranged from all of her friends and lost in projects that the others don’t think she should be working on. Nadia’s family is concerned about her, but she doesn’t seem to recognize that she might be in trouble.
Review
I have mixed feelings on this one. There are things I loved and others things I struggled with. My only connection to Wasp before this was the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This is not the same timeline/universe, so I had a lot of catching up to do when I started reading this. That added to the lag I felt early on as I tried to find the rhythm of this. Other readers more familiar with Nadia won’t have that issue.
Other places I struggled:
- VERA, the crux of the plot, was barely present in the first third of the story. While this made for some great character development time, I kept wondering where the plot was.
- There’s some name dropping early on that didn’t feel essential to the narrative. I get anchoring the book in the larger universe – and characters like Janet and Bobbie and a fun surprise at the end do that. It makes sense that a Marvel author would want to play with the larger palette of Marvel characters, but when a name seems to be there just to be there, I was distracted.
- I was also distracted by the use of the words “boys” and “girls” when talking about adults in the story. For example, there was one scene in my review copy where Nadia and Margaret are together doing something and the book refers to them together as the “girls.” Nadia is 16; Margaret is at least 23 or 24. I couldn’t find her exact age, but she started her company at 22, and it’s been doing business for at least a little while. In a story about empowering women and girls, it was jarring to see this pair referred to as “girls” when one of them is an adult.
- The previous things probably sound minor in the scheme of things, but the one piece that almost drove me to giving up on the book was the intrusive inclusion of “Nadia’s Neat Science Facts” throughout the story. These are not footnotes (which the book also has, but uses pretty well), but instead they are first person interludes of science information. I found that they interrupted the flow of the story almost every time they were used. And some didn’t even seem necessary at all to explain the science going on in the story. I wish they had been included at the beginning or end of chapters instead, where there’s a natural break, rather then interrupt the narrative of the book.
But it wasn’t not all a struggle. There were also things I loved:
- I thoroughly enjoy found family stories, and this is a great one.
- Nadia’s squad has some diversity in race, in sexual orientation (two of the girls are dating), and one team member has cerebral palsy.
- The action descriptions, especially in the fight scenes, are outstanding. I read a lot of superhero stories, and often the fight scenes lose me, and I skim past them. They get wordy and drag down the story. This was NOT the case in this book. I could actually visualize the scene from the writing. The author did an exceptionally good job with this in my opinion.
- The mental health and therapy pieces are woven in naturally. Medication and education about her bipolar disorder are normalized, everyday parts of Nadia’s life.
- Once the VERA story takes off, I enjoyed the book. I didn’t click readily with the team in this because of some of the dynamics in play because of the story, but I did enjoy seeing Nadia and her crew working together.
I might check out a sequel if the storyline sounds compelling. Sadly, I didn’t really click with any of the characters enough here for them to draw me back no matter what, so the plot will be a big factor.
If you enjoy the Unstoppable Wasp already, or if you like superhero stories or STEM stories featuring young women, consider giving this one a go.