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Summary
Summary
Blaze is tired of spending her life on the sidelines.
All she wants is for Mark the Soccer Stud to notice her. Not as Josh's weird sister who drives a turd-brown minivan. And not as that nerdy girl who draws comics.
What she gets is her very own arch-nemesis.
Name: Mark Deninger, aka Mark the Shark
Occupation: Soccer star and all-around lady killer
Relationship Status: Serial dater
Group Affiliation: No loyalty
Known Superpowers: Anti-girlfriend force field, breaking hearts
Mark may have humiliated Blaze supervillian-style, but what he doesn't know is how geek girls always get revenge.
#GeekGrlzRevenge
Author Notes
When she was 17, LAURIE BOYLE CROMPTON painted her first car hot pink using 40 cans of spray paint. This turned her into an overnight icon in Butler, PA. She now lives near NYC in Queens, but maintains a secret identity in New Paltz, NY where she and her family can often be found tromping through the forest. Visit www.lboylecrompton.com
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Seventeen-year-old Blaze views life through the lens of comic books (she's a Marvel girl, and her father even named her after Ghost Rider's alter ego). With Blaze's mother working all hours and her father having abandoned the family for an acting career, Blaze is overburdened with responsibilities, and obsessively drawing and reading comics doesn't exactly send the boys running her way. She's thrilled when her crush, soccer dreamboat Mark, takes notice of her, but he lives up to his bad reputation, and after they hook up, Blaze has to summon her inner superhero to clean up the mess. First-time novelist Crompton handily establishes Blaze as a diehard comics fan who's not entirely comfortable in her own skin; her funny-crass interactions with her friends and her younger brother make for entertaining reading. What makes the story truly valuable, however, has less to do with comics than with the way Crompton takes on the practice of slut-shaming-the novel forces readers to reconsider the way they treat their peers, especially girls, over their sexual behavior, real or imagined. Ages 13-up. Agent: Ammi-Joan Paquette, Erin Murphy Literary Agency. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
Seventeen-year-old Blaze got her name and her love of classic Marvel comics from her father, who, like herself, is an aspiring artist. While Blaze's focus is comic art, her father abandoned their family to pursue his dream of becoming an actor in New York. In the meantime, geeky Blaze has been busy shuttling her younger brother to and from soccer practice and trying to catch the attention of her brother's handsome but smarmy soccer coach, Mark. After Blaze catches and then promptly loses Mark the Shark's attention, she concocts a revenge plot full of fire and creativity. The novel's pacing is uneven, and readers will anticipate many plot turns, including Blaze's poor choices. Still, Crompton explores popular territory bullying, finding oneself, and overcoming mistakes and her title will help fill the dire need for books about girls whose interests transcend gender stereotypes.--Mack, Candice Copyright 2010 Booklist
School Library Journal Review
Gr 9 Up-Blaze is a comic book fan and draws them herself. She's a "soccer mom" for her younger brother, driving him and his friends to soccer practice, where she crushes on Mark, the boys' coach, and he is starting to show signs of interest. Blaze and her friends try on sexy lingerie at the mall, and a friend takes a picture of Blaze and texts it to Mark. He gets the wrong idea about her and takes her out. She loses her virginity to him on their first date, and then he never calls her again. Blaze gets her revenge by making Mark the Shark a lead player in a comic book. But when he posts the picture of Blaze, things go horribly wrong and she becomes a pariah at her school. Crompton offers an interesting perspective on how a rumor can affect its victim. Blaze is a likable character, and the snarky dialogue will hold readers' interest.-Melissa Stock, Arapahoe Library District, Englewood, CO (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Geeky girl with absent father and quirky hobby meets unsuitable boy, then realizes Mr. Right has been under her nose all along. Blaze's self-centered father, a caricature, left the family to become an actor, leaving her with only her name (from Ghost Rider's Johnny Blaze) and a love for classic Marvel Comics. Now, Blaze spends her time ferrying her 13-year-old brother Josh and his farting, breast-ogling, gay-jokemaking friends to and from soccer practice. She has a crush on Mark, Josh's soccer coach, but their relationship fails to progress until Blaze's friend snaps a picture of Blaze trying on lingerie and sends it to Mark's phone. After a confusing and pressure-filled sexual encounter and Mark's subsequent brushoff, Mark posts the half-naked photo on clunkily named Facebook stand-in FriendsPlace, and it goes viral. The resultant bullying is harsh but believable, and it's satisfying to see Blaze channeling her hurt and anger into making comics and redecorating her Superturd of a minivan. Less impressive, however, are some of Blaze's asides to the reader ("Stuart is one of only three black students in our school....I feel somewhat hip and urban having him here at my house") and the frequent subtle digs at girls being high-maintenance, stalkers, actual sluts and brainwashing feminists. Timely subject matter and an adequate romance, but nothing super. (Fiction. 12-16)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Excerpts
Excerpts
Chapter 1
Hear me X-Men! No longer am I the woman you knew!
I am FIRE! And LIFE INCARNATE!
Now and forever... I am PHOENIX!
-Jean Grey, The Uncanny X-Men #138
I am soaring free.
My astonishing future hurtles toward me with supernova force.
The open road ahead is bursting with the promise of All New Adventures! and the wind Whooshes! with the sound of...
"Fire in the hole!"
"Oh my God! A-jay!"
The groans hit me a split-second before the stench, and Bampf! I remember: That's right. Soaring free isn't really my thing.
My thing is driving my thirteen-year-old brother, Josh, and his friends around in a turd-brown minivan. I am the eternal chauffeur to a gang of Soccer Cretins. Make that totally-disgusting Soccer Cretins with reeking emissions issues.
"Dude, you should see a doctor or something," Andrew calls from the back, his voice muffled through the T-shirt held over his nose. "That is totally not normal."
I glance in the rearview mirror and see Ajay look up from his perpetual video game to smile proudly. "You guys like that one?"
Josh sucker punches Ajay, and the two of them start wrestling in the seat behind me. Bash! Block! Kick!
Over his T-shirt-mask, Andrew catches my eye in the mirror and we share a look of hopelessness.
Meanwhile, the horny freak to my right is busy ogling my cleavage. Again. I take a hand off the steering wheel to yank up my T-shirt's neckline. "Dylan, if you don't stop staring at my rack you're never sitting shotgun again."
Josh immediately stops his backseat battle with Ajay and leans forward to cuff Dylan's shaved head with his palm. "Dude! That's my sister."
"Ow! I was looking at the dashboard," Dylan lies as he adjusts his glasses. "Just checking how much gas we've used."
Josh, Andrew, Ajay, and I respond with a sarcastic harmony of, "Riiiight," and, "Sure," and, "We believe you."
Dylan scrambles to make his lie more elaborate by blaming all of global warming on the lousy gas mileage of my 2002 Grand Caravan: the mild-mannered minivan also known as the Subatomic Superturd of Steel.
I lean further out the window. The jolt of fresh air is a welcome change from the toxic cloud festering inside the minivan. Plus, it helps erase the sense that I've just been violated by Dylan's vulgar mind. Please do not let me have a starring role in some near-future wet dream.
I try imagining a superpower that would reduce my attractiveness to pubescent boys, while inversely making me more alluring to über-hotties like the cretins' coach, Mark. Putting out is likely the missing plutonium to that puzzle. I am, after all, the Amazing Su-per Virgin Girl! Fully flowered! With chastity of steel!
Not that I'm all that virtuous. It's pretty easy to say no when no one's even asking for it. I never took a vow of purity, but I have a nun's reputation anyway. It hasn't done much for my ability to snag a boyfriend, but I don't really want to use all my time and energy working on a sluttier image.
My dad gave me a cool name, Blaze, but my life is so unexciting that my name is more ironic than the soccer ball magnet I stuck on the back of my minivan-my failed attempt to create visual irony. The universal soccer mom badge suits me too well to be ironic.
I finally pull Superturd into the parking lot, where all the other minivans are wearing their soccer-ball magnets in a non-ironic manner. I've barely screeched to a total stop before the boys are evacuating through the sliding doors and thundering toward the field.
In my head, I commission them, I bid thee, go forth, Mighty Cretins!
Josh, the Nuclear Dynamo! Greet your destiny of triumph with your superstar soccer skills. There isn't a twerpy little brother alive that I'd rather be driving all over green creation.
Dylan, the Colossal Hormone! May your lewd glances be reciprocated by the sideline MILFs on this fine day.
Godspeed to you, Andrew, the small but swift Galactic Goalie! Never has there existed a thirteen-year-old so above the immature fart jokes that surround thee.
And dear Ajay, the Ozone Destroyer! What can I say, aside from: Thank God you are clearing the hell outta my minivan before the seats melt.
As usual, once the Mighty Cretins have cleared, I pull my faded pink beach chair out of Superturd's back end, grab my messenger bag covered in superhero pins, and make my way over to the field. After setting myself up on the sidelines, a bit removed from the cluster of overly aggressive parents, I put on my mirrored sunglasses to scan the field.
I quickly spot Mark, and everything else fades into background.
He strides easily across the field with a net sack filled with yellow soccer balls slung over one shoulder. I focus on the one bouncing playfully against his butt. Man, how I'd love to be that soccer ball.
Mark embodies the single wonder in my dismal pseudo-soccer-mom life. His taking over the team last spring was like a wish granted for my seventeenth birthday. A wish that was too fantastic for me to even think it up on my own. He and I go to the same school, but we may as well inhabit separate universes. Our lives are so different, it's like I'm stuck with Batman and Superman in the DC World, while Mark is partying in the Marvel Universe with every other worthwhile character. That's right. I said it: Make mine Marvel.
Mark wears a faded blue baseball cap over his dark curly hair and a gray Wolverine team shirt. The odds of him taking that shirt off are lessened by the cooling weather, which is quite tragic considering his spectacular abs.
In private, I've sketched him from every imaginable angle. Looking now at his strong legs, lined with muscles and covered with dark hair, I let myself wonder about what lies further up, under his thin white soccer shorts. Due to my Su-per Virgin Girl! alter-ego, I'm quite unfamiliar with that territory. That is, aside from a traumatizing walk-in on Josh peeing that shall never be mentioned again. To be totally honest, I'm mildly terrified of penises. (Or would that plural be peni?) Either way, the lump in Mark's shorts doesn't move as he strides across the even grass to shake hands with the other team's coach. The other coach is cute enough, yet I find I'm not the slightest bit curious what his penis looks like.
TWEEEET! The whistle sounds, signaling the start of the game. With a sigh, I flick my white-blonde ponytail behind one shoulder and pull my sketchpad out of my messenger bag. I take a quick inventory of the vintage comics I packed. There is nothing more awesome than good, old-fashioned, superhero-versus-bad-guy comic books. The classic ones where you can actually read a whole plot in five issues and one sitting. I'm not so into the current darkly stylized ones, and I don't much care for graphic novels or manga, but retro comics really turn me on.
Today, I have two Iron Mans, a Silver Surfer, and a Daredevil packed carefully in their individual Mylar sleeves. I have to take precautions to keep them in mint condition, since they're from the massive collection my dad left when he teleported his life to Manhattan.
My regular soccer sideline routine is to sketch my own comics until the game is nearly over and then lose myself in the superhero stories. Opening my sketchpad, I flip to an empty page filled with endless possibilities.
"Blaze!" At the sound of my name, I look up and see a soccer ball heading straight for my head. My sketchpad slides off my lap as I instinctively half-stand to catch the ball.
FOOM!
The catch stings my shoulder. Rubbing it, I see Mark jogging lightly toward me. Before I can move, he's directly in front of me, easing the ball out of my hand. His proximity is exhilarating, plus I'm grateful I don't need to demonstrate my awkward ball-throwing technique.
I'm hypnotized by his smiling gray eyes, which are amplified by his gray shirt. "Nice reflexes," he says, and my insides give a twitch.
"You should see me throw." I grin, making a mental note to never let Mark see me throw.
He raises his eyebrows appreciatively, and sonic vibrations run through me. Mark turns to throw the ball gracefully to Josh, but before rejoining the action he gives me another look. Dipping his head, he mouths, "Thanks," in a way that is so hot I have to sit down in my pink folding chair before I lose consciousness. Eep!
Mark seems to have some unnamable quality that tunes my whole body to a higher frequency. Like Peter Parker's Spidey Sense, except with a whole different sort of tingling. What can I say? That boy just does it for me.
It takes a few moments before I'm able to refocus my attention back on my sketching, and even then, I draw a few accidental hearts in the margins before calming down enough to get back to work on my comic.
I've always liked doodling, but I didn't start drawing comics of my own until after I read through Dad's entire stash. The collection is stored in six huge boxes in our basement and includes most of the main Marvel characters from their origins up to the tail end of the 1980s. It's almost as if Dad left those boxes of comics behind on purpose. Like he was handing me a message that said he'd never forget about me and would come soaring back if I ever really needed him.
I suppose sketching is my silly way of trying to answer him back. Of letting him know I understand.
This one time, I even mailed a few sheets of my drawings to him in New York. They featured Ice Girl, my first attempt at creating my own superhero. She's a little shy, but seriously kicks butt with her ability to freeze and smash any bad guy that comes her way. I designed her with large breasts, like the super-chicks from the '80s, but I couldn't draw hands yet so Ice Girl flies with her arms behind her back. Which makes it look as if her boobs are her source of power. It probably made Dad wonder about me being gay or something, but I put a lot of time into drawing the comic panels I sent him and I liked how they came out.
Dad usually talks to me and Josh on the phone every few months or so, but he never did say anything about what he thought of Ice Girl. I figure he just forgot about it, or else it got lost in the mail. Or maybe she's just so totally lame he didn't want to hurt my feelings. I never bothered bringing it up.
Thankfully, I've moved past creating cheesy superheroes with porn-star breasts, and now most of my comics focus on a character who looks and talks and acts pretty much exactly like I do. Or how I would act if I wasn't such a geek, anyway. Plus she has telekinetic powers and mad skills with a dominatrix whip. Oh yes, and she has this ultra-cool hot-pink Mustang that Zooms! through the air, instead of a turd-brown soccer mom minivan.
I call her the Blazing Goddess and sometimes Blaze for short because, hey, my life may pretty much suck, but my name is still amazing.
Excerpted from Blaze (Or, Love in the Time of Supervillains) by Laurie Boyle Crompton All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.