Personal Rating: 0.75 Stars Goodreads Rating: 3.37 Stars Content Rating: Light R JANUARY 1 CURRENT STATUS: No job, no boyfriend, no permanent place to live, no car, and most of my clothes are held together with staples and duct tape. Bank account almost wiped out. Many of my former associates have expressed a desire that I never darken their doorways again for legal and financial reasons. She-Hulk got us got us kicked out of the Avengers Mansion. People keep posting videos online of her New Year's Eve shenanigans: twirling, flaming telephone poles in Times Square, climbing the Empire State Building while dangling Anderson Cooper... Saying there are two sides to Jennifer Walters's personality is an understatement. When she hasn't morphed into a 650-pound, crime-fighting, hard-partying superhero, she's a single lawyer trying to get her act together. Hilarious and action-packed, The She-Hulk Diaries tells her story, as she juggles her intense legal career by day with battling villains and saving the world by night. Maybe bad guys will stop trying to destroy the planet so she can have a real social life and even meet a guy who isn't trying to take over the universe. (goodreads.com) Normally, when I say a book filled me with emotion, I mean it as a compliment to the author. If I’m saying that about a book it means it made me immensely happy or made me cry or elicited the emotion that the book is portraying. When I say that The She-Hulk Diaries filled me with emotion, what I mean is: this book filled me with rage. This is going to be a long review, folks. You know I love Marvel Comics. You know I love superheroes. You might know that one of my favorite superheroes is She-Hulk. No, she isn’t just the female version of Bruce Banner’s alter ego. To give you a quick summary: Bruce Banner had a very shy cousin named Jennifer Walters who was a lawyer. Her father was a local sheriff and he made some enemies who came after Jen and shot her multiple times. She was taken to the hospital in time, but needed a blood transfusion. The only person who was around who was a match was her cousin, Bruce. Now, it’s obviously a terrible idea for a man whose blood is loaded with gamma radiation to give anyone else blood, but they were out of options. So Jen got Bruce’s blood and hulked out. The difference being that she retains her own personality and knowledge while she is She-Hulk. She finds that being She-Hulk gives her more confidence so she stays as her green self most of the time and still goes by the name Jennifer Walters. She has worked for the Avengers and the Fantastic Four and saved the world on multiple occasions. I think She-Hulk is an amazing character because she is strong, she is kind, she is smart, and she is interesting. She is not just the genderbent version of Hulk. With that out of the way let me tell you about this book, which I think is a stain on my favorite superheroine’s name. Not to be dramatic or anything. You know how I often see a pretty cover and fall in love with a book before I even read it? Yeah… usually it turns out okay for me. This time not so much. I was looking for the She-Hulk comics on a website that sells cheap books (thriftbooks.com) and I stumbled across this novel. I got really excited and, since it was only a few dollars, I bought it. I did a quick skim of the summary, but I didn’t think too much about it before I just added it to cart. I mean, it was a book about She-Hulk. I was going to get my hands on it one way or another anyway. I looked at a few reviews online after I ordered it and people were saying they didn’t like it very much. I ignored their comments. I ignored the fact that people said that Jen and She-Hulk weren’t the same persona and more like a Jekyll-Hyde situation. I ignored everyone because it was a book about my favorite hero and I wanted to give it a chance. Then I started reading. I almost quit after the first chapter, but I have a 100 page rule. By the time I got to page 100 I kept reading out of spite. I wanted to see this thing through so I could write an angry review about it. And here we are. Now, I hate writing angry reviews (okay, it’s a little fun) because as an author myself I try to respect other authors. Writing is hard stuff and it sucks when people put your work down. So, if Marta Acosta ever sees this review I want to apologize. Good for you for writing and publishing a book! It’s an impressive feat that I have not been able to accomplish myself. I am really sorry, but I’m about to trash talk your book. I’m going to attempt to put aside my bias of having She-Hulk as my favorite superhero and judge this book as a book. Without further ado: The plot for this book is basically that Jennifer Walters has recently been kicked out of Avengers’ Mansion because of She-Hulk’s rowdy (and frankly alarming) behavior. So she needs a permanent place to live. She also quit (or maybe was fired?) from her job as a superhuman lawyer and needs a new job. Plus, she wants to stop turning into her alter ego so much because She-Hulk gets them into trouble. On top of all that, she seems to think that she really needs a boyfriend too. So the premise is that she is making resolutions to get all of these things and become a better person over the year and keep a diary about it. Apart from the superhero aspect it’s got all the ingredients to make an amazing chick-lit. I’m not overly fond of chick-lit, but from what I know this has the makings of one. Which, maybe it’s supposed to be. Even then the story was pretty bad, as was the writing, and the characters. Let’s talk characters, shall we? Jen is really, really, immensely, impressively annoying. You could actually make her less annoying if you imagined her with an exaggerated “valley-girl” voice because it gave her annoyingness purpose. Just saying. Anyway, she’s annoying and her characterization relied mostly on other people telling her about herself, which she then wrote in her diary, leaving the reader to wonder if she is a reliable narrator. Seriously, everyone she came into contact to was like “wow, such pretty green eyes!” and “wow, such long legs!” and “wow, what fabulous hair!” and “wow, you are so, so, so smart!” and “wow, you are the best lawyer ever!” and “wow, you are so emotionally complex!” and it got old really fast to hear about how much everyone loved Jen. And she still thought she was dowdy and boring. Even though she had the continuing assurance from everyone except her lawyer rival that she was the best thing since sliced bread. Plus, she, unlike the real Jennifer Walters, she is hugely concerned with finding a man to be her boyfriend and seemed to find her worth in a man. *strangled screeching from Corrie* Seriously, the She-Hulk I know dated a bunch of dudes, sure, but she never needed a man and that was made crystal clear. And since they are separate people in this book let’s talk about She-Hulk. She was referred to, several times a page, as Shulky. It got irritating real fast. Her personality was pretty boring. All she did was party, break things people told her not to break, and wear skimpy outfits. There was a few moments when I thought she was on the edge of character development, but then she went back to calling people “stooopid” and saying things like “Shulky like”. Then we’ve got Dahlia, Jen’s best friend. Even though she was designed to be a cool person (wacky hair and matching contacts, her own hair salon, a feisty spirit, and an even feistier dog) she had zero personality. You could have replaced her with an encouraging magic eight ball or a recording of “you can do it Jen!” and no one would have noticed the difference. All she ever did was encourage Jen and make dirty jokes! Oh, and own her own business. And when asked why she was never in a serious relationship, she replied that it was because it would take away from her salon - her life’s dream. Minor spoiler: and at the end of the book she found that having a man was really what was best for her too! (I’m surprised I didn’t break my keyboard with how angrily I typed that.) End minor spoiler. I won’t lie, I flung the book away from me when that happened… I did that several times throughout this read. There was also a lot of shrieking and ranting to my sister. And then there are the various men. We’ve got Ellis who is Jen’s crush because she sort of dated him a long time ago when he was a big popular musician (and is now a quieter science teacher who loves kids). Oh no! Ellis is engaged to a super mean woman who hates Jen? Well that’s too bad, guess Jen will have to treat him professionally and not swoon over him - hahahahaha nope. And his fiancee only gets meaner and more evil as the story continues, of course. One thing I really hated about Ellis was that when he originally met Jen he thought her name was Gin, which is a simply misunderstanding, but when he found out her real name he still occasionally called her Gin and SPOILER: even after they got together he asked her if he could call her Gin! Like seriously, dude, you don’t like her real name? What is the matter with you?! Can I pretty please go into this book just to take another copy of this book and slap Ellis with it? Repeatedly? END SPOILER. Some of the other important men are Fritz, who is briefly in it to produce jealousy in Ellis, and Nelson, who is a dentist that Jen randomly becomes friends with, eats Doritos with, and then goes LARPing with, cuz why not? Nelson was, honestly, my favorite character and for a whole page he was accidentally called “Norman” by the author. You would also think that Tony Stark (yes, Iron Man) was an important character, considering his name was mentioned at least three times a chapter, despite him never actually making an appearance in the book. He was mentioned with such frequency, not because he was relevant to the plot, but because Jen used to date him (which is actually canon) and she had to compare her several prospective boyfriends to someone. You know, the only superhero besides She-Hulk that had a big speaking role was Bruce Banner and all he ever did was judge Jen, tell her she was a great cousin, and then run off to do science. Each of their conversations followed that formula. The book mentioned a few other heroes (Fantastic Four, Hawkeye, Black Widow, Thor, and Rogue) but no one ever showed up to spice up the story. There are countless other dudes that were sort of kind of not really important to the plot, but they didn’t do much. And then there was Sven. The super handsome doctor who is Jen’s client who just happens to be madly in love with Jennifer. Let’s not even get into how unethical it was for Jen to want to date her client. So as far as characters go, this book was kind of lacking. You’d think since it’s about a female lawyer/superhero it would be filled with strong female characters too, but if I’m being honest this thing barely passed the Bechdel test. I’d better start wrapping up, but I could go on for quite a while about how much I disliked this book. But I’m sure you don’t want me to get down to the nitty gritty details. Like how the children in this book were all written to be idiots. Or how Jen pretty much used dying kids as an excuse to spy on Ellis. Or how there are so. Many. Freaking. Songs! Because Ellis is a musician and Jen thinks that all of his songs are about her so she has to take time in almost every chapter to examine the filthy lyrics of his songs. And they are very obviously about her. And you certainly don’t want to hear about how many times Jen flirted with married men. Or that all of the humor was super forced. Or how her Krav Maga teacher was super stereotyped. Or how her therapist kept trying to get her to get together with an engaged dude. Or the fact that there was a potentially sinister subplot about fruit juice that never went anywhere. Okay. I’m done. I promise. But be warned that if you ever ask me about this book I’m going to go on a very long rant.
Do I recommend The She-Hulk Diaries? While I laugh mockingly see if you can answer that question for yourself, friend. Hahahahahahahahahahaha! NO. I have never rated a book lower.
Anyway, thank you so much for reading my biased rant - err - unprejudiced review! Hope you enjoyed my seething! Image sources: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16235119-the-she-hulk-diaries https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20454376-she-hulk-volume-1
1 Comment
Kirsten
6/20/2018 07:51:50 am
This potentially sinister subplot about fruit juice that never went anywhere sounds like the best part of this book. XD
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