When the Bat’s away, the Cat will play. It’s time to see how many lives this cat really has. . . .
Two years after escaping Gotham City’s slums, Selina Kyle returns as the mysterious and wealthy Holly Vanderhees. She quickly discovers that with Batman off on a vital mission, Batwing is left to hold back the tide of notorious criminals. Gotham City is ripe for the taking.
GENRE:
Young Adult, Superhero
PAGES:
304 pages
PART OF A SERIES?:
3rd in the DC Icons series
1st is Wonder Woman: Warbringer by Leigh Bardugo (review) and 2nd is Batman: Nightwalker by Marie Lu (review)
RELEASE DATE:
August 7th, 2018
PUBLISHER:
Random House Books for Young Readers
YOU CAN FIND THE BOOK AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR THE FOLLOWING LINKS:
Barnes and Noble (Signed Book)
GOODREADS SUMMARY:
When the Bat’s away, the Cat will play. It’s time to see how many lives this cat really has. . . .
Two years after escaping Gotham City’s slums, Selina Kyle returns as the mysterious and wealthy Holly Vanderhees. She quickly discovers that with Batman off on a vital mission, Batwing is left to hold back the tide of notorious criminals. Gotham City is ripe for the taking.
Meanwhile, Luke Fox wants to prove he has what it takes to help people in his role as Batwing. He targets a new thief on the prowl who seems cleverer than most. She has teamed up with Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn, and together they are wreaking havoc. This Catwoman may be Batwing’s undoing.
MY REVIEW
I LOVED THIS BOOK. Look, I’ll be honest, the way I was with the prior two DC Icons novels, that I am not a huge DC fan. I am learning a lot of Wonder Woman since my new obsession and I know Batman from the cartoon and movies. I know basically NOTHING about Catwoman but I’ve enjoyed the previous two books by Leigh and Marie and I LOVE Sarah’s writing and I was interested in reading something by Sarah that wasn’t high fantasy. I am so glad that I was able to get my hands on this because I think this has honestly been my favorite one yet.
I loved the feel of this book. I know very little of Selina Kyle, mostly from Anne Hathaway’s portrayal in The Dark Knight Rises. I loved the angle that Sarah decided to take. She started with Selina as a teenager, struggling to take care of her very sick sister after the abandonment of their mother, and flashes forward a couple years, where she is about nineteen or twenty. I really liked that. It made what Selina did, what she said, what she was capable of so much more real and believable. I also really liked that the choice was made – whether it was a choice of the publisher or Sarah – for Selina’s enemy to be Luke Fox, Batwing, instead of Batman. I do enjoy Batman and his stories but honestly, I love to get the lesser known heroes and anti-heros and villains. I loved the darker, mysterious feel of this story and I genuinely enjoyed the two points of view between Selina and Luke.
Going back to the dark and mysterious – I think that’s what makes this such a great novel. Sarah has always been so good at weaving her stories, mixing you up, confusing you until things are revealed and you never even saw them coming and that is exactly what happens in this novel. You think you have an idea of what Selina’s motives are but she’s so good at what she does, she’s so good at manipulation and she is so good at lying and keeping her real feelings hidden away behind a mask that it honestly caught me off guard when I figured out what was going on. I liked that things that seemed like small, insignificant details came back in a big, big way. I think that’s really great world building and story telling and Sarah is just so great at both of those.
What I loved the most about this novel though was the team up of Selina Kyle aka Catwoman with Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn. I love a good girl power team and this was just so good. I don’t have a ton of knowledge on Ivy or Harley either but I loved that I had this glimpse of them, young, still relatively untested, but still whip smart and dangerous as hell. I love that the dynamic of three strong, independent women working together was fun and awesome but also delicate and volatile. Most of the time, you don’t really get teams like this and I truly enjoyed it. The different ways of working, different strategies, different personalities made it a thrill ride, but a complicated one and I really truly enjoyed it. While there is a complicated romance for Selina in the novel, I didn’t really care too much about it and wasn’t focused on it. I was focused on the relationships between Selina, Ivy and Harley and how they weren’t perfect but they still found ways to work together. I wish there were more books with female characters like this, especially when its not perfect, like these ones.
RATING:
5 out of 5 Stars
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