Alex Sanchez

The Greatest Superpower

It's the summer before high school, and thirteen-year-old Jorge Fuerte wants nothing more than to spend his days hanging out with his fellow comic-book-obsessed friends. But then everything changes. His parents announce they're divorcing for a reason Jorge and his twin brother, Cesar, never saw coming--their larger-than-life dad comes out as transgender. Jorge struggles to understand the father he's always admired, but Cesar refuses to have anything to do with him. As Jorge tries to find a way to stay true to the father he loves, a new girl moves into the neighborhood: cool, confident, quirky Zoey. She tames Jorge's unruly terrier and enlists the terrier and Jorge in a dance routine for the back-to-school talent show. As the date of the show draws near, Jorge must face his fears and choose between being loyal to his brother or truthful about his family's secret. Although he's no superhero, Jorge already has the world's greatest superpower--if he decides to use it.

Jelke Lenaerts

I received a galley of this book through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review 

This book has content warnings for sexism, abuse, racism and transphobia.

I feel weird giving this a two star rating because the trans storyline in this book was so poorly done that it feels like it should be a one star but all the other storylines in here were done well and I don't have too much to complain about. Honestly, if the trans storyline wasn't in here this could have been a four star book. But oh well, here we are. I don't know to whom this book was directed because I would never give this to a trans person. The transphobia in this book is brutal and I don't think trans people should read that. The MC is seen as supportive of his dad just because he uses the right pronouns and doesn't deadname his dad. That's the bare minimum. It doesn't make you a great ally. Especially, when everything else you do is completely transphobic. But I feel like that was all written of because at least our MC was trying. That's also why I wouldn't recommend this for kids with trans parents. This book gives the idea that being absolutely transphobic is alright as long as you're trying. No! Also for a book that centers a trans storyline and has a gender fluid side character this book has very black and white ideas about gender. They literally mention at a certain point that the MC's dad being trans made sense in retrospect because she was a stay at home dad and that isn't a thing real mean do. Disgusting! If you take out all of that shit though you get a pretty decent middle grade novel that is clearly written by an author who usually writes YA. I quite liked the friendship dynamics and the brother's storyline was also interesting (if you take out the deeply rooted transphobia of course). There's even a small bit of discourse about how the MC has a lot of privilige compared to his brother as the MC is white (like their mother) and his brother is brown (like their father). The romance could have been cute if this book took place over a longer period of time. All the events of this book happened in 2 weeks and therefore the romance was a bit too insta-lovey. Spreading the story over more time would have also made the love interest's transition to 'I'm not ready to have a boyfriend' to dating our MC make more sense. At times the characters also felt a bit older than they were (hence why I said earlier that it was clearly written by a YA author). Even if I had my problems with the book it was a quick read and if it weren't for the trans storyline I would recommend this to people. But now it's just one big YIKES.

The Greatest Superpower

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