"Little Nightmare, I have faith in you. And when you succeed, we will rise again. We will all rise again"

* * * 
3 / 5

WHERE WAS MY BIG EMOTIONAL REVEAL??? Nowhere. I was turning pages with vested interest, waiting for the dramatic, overwrought moment where the penny drops and Nova realises that Adrian is the Sentinel and Adrian realises that Nova is Nightmare. Alas. It's got to be coming in the next book, right?

"She was Nova McLain. The superhero and the fraud"

For me, Archenemies was about on par with Renegades - fun and cool, with a lack of any serious commitment to villainy or anarchy on Nova's part. The pace is slower and the book is longer than Renegades, which makes it a less urgent and more leisurely read, but it makes up for that with the quantity of cute and heartwarming moments. Oscar asking Ruby to dance, the team watching Ruby's brothers compete in the "Sidekick Olympics" (patronising name, am I right? ha), and Nova and Adrian going on dates.

The reveal at the end of Renegades was pretty awesome and definitely a big factor in my deciding to pick up Archenemies, but it didn't end up playing too big of a role. I'll be vague, for those that might not have finished Renegades, but it was pretty big deal and then was toned down in this sequel. Things are pretty much the same in Archenemies: Nova is still infiltrating the Renegades, finding out information about their strengths and weaknesses, and plotting in dark, creepy tunnels with Phobia, Leroy, and Honey. 

"the Renegades had made themselves judge and jury, lawmakers and enforcers"

I liked the moral quandaries presented in the book. The Renegades have developed a solution that they call Agent N, that when injected is able to strip a prodigy of their powers, permanently. Nova thinks, quite reasonably, that this amount of power is horrifying to bestow on any one individual and who made the Council the judge, jury, and executioner, anyhow? 

Archenemies isn't going to be everyone's cup of tea. It's slow, full of romance, and there's a lot of time where everyone sits around arguing about what is right and what is wrong. But there's also some sweet action scenes.

My thanks to Netgalley, the publisher, and the author for an ARC of Archenemies