Sep 2024 Book Recommendation: Renegades by Marissa Meyer

Intro

As someone who loves superheroes, I’m happy that superhero novels are slowly becoming more and more common, to the point where even a bestselling author like Marissa Meyer wrote not just one but a whole trilogy of them.

While Renegades definitely isn’t quite as popular as the Lunar Chronicles, it is regarded highly by fans, and is probably one of the best superhero book series out there at the moment. It almost feels like a comic book while you’re reading it, with fast pacing, action, drama, and a healthy dose of humor too.

That said, let’s get to it!

Renegades by Marissa Meyer Overview

Genre(s): Young adult, superhero

Series: Book 1 of 3 of Renegades

POV: Third-person past

Length: 576 pages

Renegades follows two main point of view characters: Nova, a.k.a. the villain Nightmare, who has the power to put people to sleep with skin-to-skin contact, and Adrian, a.k.a. the hero Sketch, who has the power to bring his drawings to life at will.

When Nova was little, her whole family was murdered by a villain gang, despite the promises of the Renegades—a syndicate of people with extraordinary abilities whose main goal is to bring justice and order to the world—that they would protect them. After their death, she was taken in by her uncle, the infamous Ace Anarchy, a renowned supervillain, and swore to herself that she would exact vengeance upon the Renegades for their failure.

Adrian is the adopted son of two of the Renegades’ leaders and has started to make a name for himself as a hero in his own right. He is the leader of his own tightly-knit squad of heroes within the Renegades and has potential to be one of the greats. But, as much as he loves his team and his adoptive fathers, he feels that the Renegades have started to lose sight of their original goal of protecting the innocent, being too caught up in their lives as celebrities and rulers.

When the opportunity for Nova’s vengeance finally arises, her and Adrian’s paths collide. As she gets to know him and his team, Nova starts to realize that the dynamics within the Renegades are far more complex than she’d been led to believe.

Personal Thoughts

If you love secret identities, action, and a touch of forbidden romance, this is the book for you. It’s a fun, easy read, but also raises interesting questions about morality and heroism along the way.

This is definitely one of the best superhero novels that I’ve ever read, and the other two books in the series are just as good, if not even better. There wasn’t a single book in the series that was easy for me to put down, that’s for sure.

All right, that’s about it for this month’s reading recommendation. I hope that this has piqued your interest. Or, if you’ve already read this particular book, feel free to look into some of the similar titles—more YA superhero novels—that I’ve listed below. Until next time, happy reading!