The She-Hulk Diaries

The She-Hulk Diaries - Marta Acosta
To be honest, I didn’t expect to like this book as much as I did. I thought it would be a fun read with some action and drama and some sort of crazy evil villain trying to take over the world. 

What I didn’t bargain for and what I was pleasantly surprised by, was how frigging hilarious it was. No really. This book was LOLno LMFAO not extreme enough…ROFLMFAOOHMYGODMYRIBSHURT funny. Don’t let the comic book beginnings fool you, this is definitely a book for a mature and decidedly female audience. This book is classic Marvel meets Sex in the City. 

One thing you should know about me is that I am into comic books, secretly wish I was a superhero, get into legitimate arguments about why Star Wars is infinitely superior to Star Trek and work with dudes that make Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory look like a social extrovert am sort of “nerdy”. 

If you’re looking solely at that then it would make sense that I loved this book, however I also have a lot of literary pet peeves. I’m pleased to say that this book was surprisingly free of the tropes and stereotypes I expected to find. 

Our main character is the decidedly non-Mary Sue-esque Jen, aka She Hulk, aka Shulky. Her life is in shambles because of her alter-ego, she’s dateless, jobless and sometimes even a little spineless. 

Her best friend is a foulmouthed horndog of a pixie named Dahlia who vaguely resembles an anime character with her propensity to match her contact lenses to whichever color her hair is currently died. Their friendship was so refreshing. They give each other good advice, rely on each other and trust each other implicitly. I’ll say it again; HOW REFRESHING. And every time the two of them were together I was gigglefitting. Their back and forth was truly hilarious…and dirty, in a good way. 

Then there’s Ellis Tesla, one of the loooooove interests *waggles eyebrows*. When he walked back into Jen’s life this book went from giggling funny to choking on laughter funny. Jen has this incredible self deprecating sense of humor that I absolutely LOVED. Oh God, it was so awkward. There’s just the small problem of his shark of a fiancé Amber, whom you’ll hate. And that brings us to the other love interest. Dr. Morigi of the beautiful face and the dubious character. I’ve come to fear all mysterious doctors that I meet in the Marvel world and with good reason. Nuff said. 

The book follows Jen through her resolutions to make her life better, her confusion over Ellis, the trial she’s working on in support of her client Dr. Morigi and against the organ cloning company ReplaceMax, and her investigation into the identity of a mysterious new villain and a mysterious new hero. 

Will everyone love this? Hmmm…me thinks not. There are quite a few story lines in here. There’s Jen’s love life, Jen’s work life, Shulky’s ‘work’ life, Shulky’s social life, the emergence of mysterious new bad guys, the strange and ominous ‘Happy’ that seems to be infecting all residents of NYC (which prompted me to assume: THE END IS NIGH!) and also the innumerous name drops of other Marvel characters that you almost need to have read the comics to really understand. 

Because of all this the book might come across as all over the place to some people. It didn’t bother me. I was too engrossed in what was going to happen next on all fronts and with so muchgoing on the story never had time to drag. It was continuously interesting or hilarious or awesomely awkward or action packed. 

Then there’s those pesky Marvel purists. I’m sorry. I love the classics but I don’t want to read the same shit over and over and OVER again. I want new, I want fresh and this book was both of those things for me. 

Purists however, are purists and this book is a deviation from what you’ve previously seen of Jen and Shulky. So be warned. 

One last thing. I originally rated this book two stars because there's a body shaming scene 4/5ths of the way through that really irked me. Since it's been a while since I read it, I've calmed down enough to edit my original review and remove the rant concerning this scene. Just be forewarned that it's in there so if you have issues with body shaming you may be annoyed.