- CUTE MUTANTS is one of the most fun rides I've taken in a long time. This book had me the minute it referenced both Buffy and The Good Place in one paragraph, after that I was firmly rooting for this ragtag bunch.
- I know zero about the X-Men, so don't worry about that. Sure, there are a lot of references to specific issues and stuff, but the real heart of this book is a bunch of misfit queer teens finding themselves and their queer family.
- I loved that these kids were messy and bitter and jealous and all deeply in love with each other, both romantically and platonically. It's just a sarcastic, coming of age delight. 

Holy mixed feelings batman. Or X-men, in this case, I guess. 

To say I came to this book with high expectations is an understatement. Superheroes? Found family? Queerness? I love all these things so much. I wanted a fun wholesome romp full of cheesy tropes and a bunch of new children to love. And when it does the superhero stuff, Cute Mutants is at its best. The powers these kids inherit are super creative, it's fun to see the tropes played straight and lampshaded all at once, and it brings back the eternal questions of vigilante justice and what that looks like. Dylan's power in particular is just all kinds of incredible. 

It's just.. a lot of the rest fell flat to me. Enough that at 50% I was seriously considering quitting. It's a combo of stuff that just aren't my thing and others that I think could use better execution. For exemple, repeatedly having to witness real-world bigotry, across just about every axis, is not what I expected from this and just really not my jam (especially when the racism comes with some white saviour aftertaste).  I got used to Dylan's narration sounding like the internet, even if the metric-ton of references* often lose me, but it also sadly comes with the non-stop string of ableist slurs, so watch for that.

It also tends to flatten thing,especially characters. You know that thing fandom does where they attribute 1-2 characteristics to a character and that's suddenly all they are? That's what it felt like for Alyse, Emma, and Bianca. Coincidentally the ones that are not love interests, hm. And that's the second thing. Everyone talks about the big found family in this book and like, yeah, the Cute Mutants are all together!! But wow do the friendships feel underdeveloped to me.. except maybe Alyse's? Part of it stems from Dylan's social anxiety (which, top notch on that front), because a lot of the book is spent on Dylan even believing she has friends to begin with. Maybe this gets better in later books. Not sure I'll stick around to find out.

I think that sums up my main gripes. Don't get me wrong, I can easily see where people would fall head over heels for this. I'd probably have loved it more if I had been prepared for how dark it actually is, but the gushing reviews and cute cover forgot that bit. XD I wish I'd loved it more than I ended up doing. Kinda feels like I'm missing something. 


*Including several Harry Potter references, which considering how much "stand up to transphobia" happens in this book, which is self-published, and thus fairly easy to update.. really caught me off guard

Ahhhh I loved this superhero book so much! It is so funny and well-written! Dylan is such an interesting and unique character and I absolutely love her narration! And the whole crew! The found family! My tiny little queer heart cannot handle this book! I can't wait to read the rest.

All of the characters are so amazing and I love them. I need all good things to come to them in the future books. I need them to continue saving the day and being absolutely amazing just like they are in this one. So SO good.

⭐️ a story of secret superpowers, chaotic gays, and most of all, friendship and kindness ⭐️

Reread for the September Wick & Jane Bookclub on Instagram, the theme was Indie Author!

Rep: questioning pansexual female MC with anxiety, trans male side character, Kiwi-Chinese questioning asexual female side character, bisexual Pacific Islander female side character, lesbian Korean female side character, sapphic female side character, biromantic asexual nonbinary parent side character in a relationship with a woman.

CWs: Graphic: Blood, cursing, gore, injury/injury detail, mental illness (anxiety), violence. Moderate: deadnaming/misgendering, dysphoria, medical content, self harm, bullying, sexual assault, racism, general queerphobia/queermisia, transphobia/transmisia. Minor: car accident (crashes into a building and a tree), suicidal thoughts.

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Thank you to Caffeine Tours & the author for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

I loved this book so much 😭😭😭. This book is easily in my top ten of the year, and it's tied with Felix Ever After and Sword in the Stars for my favorite book of the year. There's honestly no way to choose between these three, I loved them all so much. But Dylan Taylor is my favorite character to ever exist, I have never related to someone as much as I relate to Dylan.

This book is kind of like an X-men retelling. Dylan Taylor is an average queer person suffering from social anxiety. When she kisses Emma Hall at her party, she ends up with superpowers. Finding out Emma kissed several other people, Dylan is eager to attempt to form a mutant brigade. When an unknown mutant starts causing havoc Dylan is sure they must take care of him, but is the group really up for it?

Cute Mutants Vol 1 is one of the gayest books I've ever read. Having so many books come out this year with amazingly queer casts has been a dream come true. Also this book is truly disaster squad goals.

SAFETY ANNOUNCEMENT: THIS BOOK IS NOT A GRAPHIC NOVEL THANK YOU.

I loved every second of this book. From Dylan's relationship with her non-binary parent called Pear, to the found family of the Cute Mutants, the queer normalized society, and the themes of vigilante justice and whether it was right. The best part of this book was the relationship between this group of friends and figuring out how they could make it work, if at all possible.

Before assembling the Cute Mutants, Dylan spends most of her time at home, hanging out with Pear or with her boyfriend, Lou. But Lou has been having trouble at home due to his parents' transphobia. With this new influx of friends in Dylan's life, he is also unsure of his place in her life and starts to get pretty jealous. It doesn't help that Dani Kim, ice queen extraordinaire (and super fucking hot), is also one of the people who has developed special powers. Dylan can't help but be attracted to her charisma, but there's no way Dani could like her, is there?

Dylan also deals with social anxiety, and so many of her thoughts really resonated with me. So much so that I started to wonder if I might have some form of social/generalized anxiety (the answer was yes). Dylan also questions her gender, and it made me feel like she might be a demigirl like myself. I have so much love for Dylan, my heart is exploding.

Then there's Dylan and Alyse, the sweetest friendship I've ever seen. I love Alyse so much and her effervescence. She is just seriously the best, and I ship her so hard with Emma! Emma is an evil mastermind and I would not be surprised if she became an evil genius. Also my ace goddess! Bianca was such a weirdo, but her character surprised me with how much I loved her! Basically, I need more of this squad ASAP.

I don't know if I really said anything besides just spewing my love of this book, but I cannot recommend it enough! 

This book is "what if a teenage X-Men fan plus a random group of her classmates actually got superpowers", with all the delight and awkwardness that this description implies. The MC is nervous, not good at the whole "friend" thing and really believes that she's responsible to DO something with her newfound powers. The overall effect is earnest and extremely relatable if you've ever been really into some THING that just became weirdly relevant after years of obsession, or if you've ever dreamed about all your random knowledge being useful as more than a curiosity. 

I like how the powers kind of fit their personalities while still not being anything I could predict. It feels like the kind of sideways logic that's emblematic of a superhero origin story without being overdone or trite. It grapples with moral grey areas in a way that's generally fun to read while being appropriately grim when necessary. The characters make a pretty great ensemble, and I like how they work to make their strange powers be effective when at first glance they don't seem very useful (neither singly nor together).

The only thing I didn't like was that the characters in general and the MC in particular had a tendency to use the kind of (usually self-effacing) ableist language that's so ubiquitous that most of us don't realize it's ableist until someone points it out (lame, dumb, etc.). It's a minor quibble in an otherwise fantastic book since the language isn't directed at anyone in an actively ableist way, but it was so frequent that it was distracting for me. I hope the characters learn better soon, but it was frustrating to read something full of ableist language when it could have used other words to convey the MC's low self-esteem.