Strictly No Heroics
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
In Strictly No Heroics, a normal teen girl must navigate crushing on her best friend, starting a new summer job, and not being squashed during the next supervillain showdown in B.L. Radley's young adult debut filled with humor and heart.
A Normie’s guide to staying alive in Sunnylake City:
1. Keep your head down.
2. Don’t make enemies.
3. Strictly no heroics.
The world is run by those with the Super gene, and Riley Jones doesn’t have it. She’s just a Normie, ducking her way around the hero vs. villain battles that constantly demolish Sunnylake City, working at a crappy diner to save up money for therapy, and trying to figure out how to tell her family that she’s queer. But when Riley retaliates against a handsy superhero at work, she finds herself in desperate need of employment, and the only place that will hire her is HENCH.
Yes, HENCH, as in henchmen: masked cronies who take villains' coffee orders, vacuum their secret lairs, and posture in the background while they fight. Riley's plan is to mind her own business and get paid...but that quickly devolves when she witnesses a horrible murder on the job. Caught in the thick of a gentrification plot, a unionization effort, and a developing crush on her prickly fellow henchwoman, Riley must face the possibility that even a powerless Normie can take a stand against injustice.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A normal human teenager living in a world where superheroes and villains are standard grapples with high school crushes and a new summer job in this insightful, multilayered debut. Seventeen-year-old Riley Jones, who's struggling to manage her anxiety and figure out how to tell her family she's queer, lives by three simple rules: "Keep your head down. Don't make enemies. Strictly no heroics." But when she's fired from her food service gig for smacking a hero after he sexually harasses her coworker, she gets a job at Hench, a company that supplies supervillains with all-purpose, anonymous hench-people. There, she learns that villainy isn't always about world domination: her coworkers are, like her, just normies trying to make ends meet. Riley's summer grows ever more complicated as the henchmen unionize, land developers look to gentrify her neighborhood, and she develops feelings for her new coworker Sherman, a gorgeous, edgy teen with plenty of attitude and secrets. Radley subverts classic comic book tropes to craft an imaginative futuristic setting grounded in realistic interpersonal challenges. In this engaging and provocative telling, Radley skillfully explores power and privilege from both human and superhuman angles. Characters are intersectionally diverse. Ages 14–up.