Written by James Allen Gardner, an author who sounds strangely familiar to me, All Those Explosions were Someone Else’s Fault follows Kim and her 3 roommates as they become Sparks (because the Dark trademarked superheros) and struggle through that change.
This again isn’t really a young adult novel because some of the terms it uses, but it is in the sense that it is about a 20-something finding out who she is now. After having 2 other personas before, perhaps this is the first time that Kim is finding out who she really is. Maybe.
This was an enjoyable book filled with science, magic, unrealistic things that the author and characters fully new was unrealistic and embraced because of that, but the characters – except Nicholas and the other bad guys – were really one dimensional. It read as if the old Kim was … well… had more depth. Which was the point, that Kim re-invents herself to hide the old short-comings of who she was before that.
Are you looking for a novel that knows its science, but is still thoroughly fiction and has magic? Are you looking for a hero origin story that is of this century? Are you looking for a book that takes part, at least for a little while, on a college campus and you will get most of the references?
Then this is your book.
There is a hint of romance, but no real romance.
