Book Review: "Karma Girl"

Superheroes, villains, true love, and spandex, oh my! If you loved The Devil Wears Prada, can’t wait for Spider-Man 3 and can’t get enough of Smallville, then Jennifer Estep’s new novel Karma Girl is definitely for you.

In the novel, Carmen Cole is a big-city journalist who gets tangled up in the secret lives of superheroes when her boyfriend, Matt, turns out to be a local hero called the Machinator. After discovering Matt in bed with another woman, Carmen makes it her mission to reveal the true identities of every superhero in the world. Her detective work makes her a target for the catsuit-wearing, fashion-focused villain Malefica, and also brings Carmen much, much closer to a sexy, muscular superhero named Striker.

Karma Girl combines the fast-paced, over-the-top action of comic books, the humor of an intelligent and sassy narrator, and the romantic dilemmas and steamy love scenes of chick-lit. When I read it, I was holding my breath wondering what would happen next. Would Carmen and Striker fall in love? Would the good guys – the Fantastic Five – ever beat the Terrible Triad? Karma Girl is an action-packed and funny novel, a good escape from papers, homework, final exams, and the rest of reality.

Although Karma Girl does have some great plot twists, especially towards the end, some parts of the novel are very predictable. Each of the five times Carmen investigated the identity of a given superhero, Estep gave away too many clues too soon, and I figured out the mystery a full 100 pages before Carmen did. Yup…every single one, five times in a row. It was pretty obvious.

But surprisingly, the novel was never boring, even though I already knew who was who. There were enough surprises left over to capture my attention. Also, I could really relate to Carmen. She’s not your ordinary chick-lit protagonist – she’s smart, brave, and has guy problems just like the rest of us. She’s a real person you can identify with, even when she’s in unrealistic situations straight out of a comic book.

Estep’s writing style takes some time to get used to. There’s a lot going on in the first chapter, and there are too many details crammed into too little space. Her overdramatic way of describing things is a little strange at first. The significance of the title Karma Girl is hard to grasp until the very end. Carmen is attracted to Striker basically for his ripped body and nothing else, which got a little annoying after a while – I wanted to tell her to go take a cold shower! – but the love story is still compelling. Estep cracks a lot of jokes in rapid-fire succession, and at the beginning they aren’t quite as funny as the author intended them to be. After a while, though, the book really made me laugh, and I realized that the overdramatic tone is part of the joke.

All in all, Karma Girl is a funny and action-filled novel, and I truly applaud Jennifer Estep for successfully combining the comic-book and chick-lit genres. So, if you’re looking for a light read this summer, I recommend that you pick it up.

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