*Review* Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm a Supervillain by Richard Roberts

 Genre: Middle Grade/Urban Fantasy

Published: June 2, 2019

Pages: 405

Penelope Akk wants to be a superhero. She's got superhero parents. She's got the ultimate mad science power, filling her life with crazy gadgets even she doesn't understand. She has two super powered best friends. In middle school, the line between good and evil looks clear.

In real life, nothing is that clear. All it takes is one hero's sidekick picking a fight, and Penny and her friends are labeled supervillains. In the process, Penny learns a hard lesson about villainy: She's good at it.

Criminal masterminds, heroes in power armor, bottles of dragon blood, alien war drones, shape shifters and ghosts, no matter what the super powered world throws at her, Penny and her friends come out on top. They have to. If she can keep winning, maybe she can clear her name before her mom and dad find out.

I listened to the audiobook version of this story. This is my honest review. 

Middle grade books can be a bit of a gamble to read as an adult, especially with a child in that age range. Reading a more fantastical book like this one makes the gamble a little bit more of a sure thing. And this story definitely had elements of the fantastical. 

In a world where you can be born with super powers, it makes sense that they'd manifest around puberty, as if tweens don't have enough changes to deal with. It also makes sense that those powers would be determined, to an extent, by genetics. So Penelope becoming a mad scientist, basically, is just logical. And since her parents keep telling her it will take years for her powers to fully develop, it makes sense that she keeps most of her actions secret from them. Add in the best friend with a former supervillain mother, and it's a recipe for disaster. 

I appreciated how Penelope was trying so hard to not be viewed as a villain, and felt her frustration every time the adults talked about how she was obviously being manipulated and led by the professional villains. I can understand her desire to prove herself, even if I did find it foolish since she is still a literal child. 

The narration sounded a bit more mature than I expect from a middle grade book, but it was perfectly pleasant. 

Overall I give Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm a Supervillain 4.2736 out of 5 stars. - Katie 

Amazon

Richard Roberts is drawn to dark, strange fairy tales, which of course is why he got famous for his perky middle school supervillain stories instead.

That presents the two halves of his work, the fun and crazy, and the dark and weird. In both cases, he does his best to entertain, to look at old ideas to see how strange they are if you think them through, and to make a story where his characters earn their happy endings.