Review: Catwoman: Soulstealer by Sarah J. Maas

Light spoilers ahead, I don’t think anything on book ruining level, but wanted to give a heads up. 

Starting out: this book contains the single sexiest scene I have ever read. 

Selina and Luke watching Jeopardy competing who knows the most answers to figure out who pays for pizza. Literally engineered for me to swoon. 

I was so into this book, it is action-packed, full of bad-ass women, and has a wonderfully tense romance. 

My surprise favorite thing about this book was the friendship between Selina, Ivy, and Harley. Selina and Ivy specifically had such a sweet meaningful friendship. I was really enamored by the two of them. 

It is SJ Maas’s thing to write about broken girls breaking the world back. We all know this. We can debate about many things about her books but I think most people can agree that is a theme she goes for often. And I think it worked SO WELL in Gotham. I really enjoyed the deep dive into Selina, I have never read any of her comics and my only previous exposure to her was Anne Hathaway’s incarnation, and I was never super enthralled by her. Didn’t have negative feelings, but I never went to seek out Catwoman comics. Now I have things to google. 

I always think that I don’t like it when the narrator reveals a plot they have been hiding from the reader, that moment where everything that has merely been hinted at falls perfectly into place and leaves you going “OH GOOD THE WORLD IS NOT DYING” then immediately telling yourself that you knew all along you should have never worried (of course then basically everyone throws something in that you should actually worry about but that is a different topic). That thing. I tell myself I hate it but history shows otherwise. Maas did it in Queen of Shadows (and probably other books), Leigh Bardugo does it in SIx of Crows, Crooked Kingdom, and King of Scars, and these are all books I liked a lot. So I guess this formula does work on me and I do not resent it as much as I thought. 

The other POV character in this book is Luke Fox, Lucius Fox’s son. He is competent, interesting, and nuanced. He has the ‘super strong alpha male’ thing that SJ Maas is known for, but is also completely in love with his parents, genuinely cares for the people around him, and respects women. Maas thanks Nic Stone and Jason Reynolds in the acknowledgments of this book and you can totally see their impact on this book. Side note: I LOVE Nic Stone if you haven’t read her GO FORTH AND DO IT! Also, this has reminded me that I need to read Jason Reynolds. He has been on my list for years and I am headed to acquire something of his ASAP. I would, of course, defer to readers who are black with opinions on how well she handled writing a black man, but I really liked him! I appreciated his reflections about how wealth didn’t erase racism from his life and the exploration of how that racism would transform when people knew he was wealthy. I liked her nods to police brutality, and I liked that Luke was shown as actively working to combat that. I appreciated that she didn’t only note the skin color of the people of color in the book, that is something that more white authors need to do; stop defaulting to white. Back to Luke: I now must go read some Batwing. I have dabbled in Batgirl, and know in comics they have a thing going on (or I think they do?) but am interested in expanding my knowledge. I also thought the way she handled PTSD added a lot to the story. I did want to know more about his life in Gotham outside of Batwing stuff. But I understand why that wasn’t a bigger focus. And it isn’t like we don’t get any of his life outside of Batwing, I just wanted more, hense me heading to get Batwing comics soon.

I always love reading a bad-ass competent heroine. I also love 'finding your power/strength’ stories, but I do love entering a world with a person who is CAPABLE (which obviously Luke is as well, so we got this two-fold!). The story is not powered by Selina learning how to defeat the villains, it is powered by the super strong emotional core of the book. I love a good 'doing it all for the person I love’ story, especially when the person they love isn’t a lover. Also, I loved that even when I was still putting together the pieces of how this was Maggie related, I could see that it was probably Maggie related somehow. The first chapter really lays the foundation very well. 

I loved Ivy! Me loving Ivy so much made he hope that Mor is going to have her sexuality handled well in future ACOTAR books. 

So I liked this book a lot. I again wish there were more DC Icon books to look forward to in the future, as of right now this is the end of the rode for me with this series, but it has certainly inspired me to seek out the comics. So good job DC, you got me. 

Last thing: the worst part about this book is the COVER. The kitten ears, the lame logo, the odd hair flare. It is just nowhere near the levels of awesome of the other three covers.

I gave this book five stars on Goodreads and finished reading it on March 14th, 2019.