Please Don't Tell My Parents I Have a Nemesis

Loved every page of this book of the "Please don't tell my Parents" saga. The storyline, the characters - I love everything about this series. Always entertaining.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.When we last left Penelope Akks at the end of Please Don't Tell My Parents I've Got Henchmen, she has established to her parents that she has full control of her superpowers, and they've decided to begin to train her as a superhero. Now, all she has to do is shed her former identity as Bad Penny in a way which will convince her parents. Meanwhile, Claire and Ray support her fully, but aren't committed to the heroic route, and have their own plans for the summer. After a spate of inventions and a chance meeting with a former villain at the local hospital, Penelope has come up with what she believes to be a foolproof plan. An incredibly convoluted plan that involves body-swapping, cloning, robots, stealing precious metals... well, let's just say that a foolproof plan seldom survives encounters with the enemy.The story had a slow start for me. I'd read the first four chapters or so as previews on the author's site, and the subsequent chapters seemed to be retreading old ground with Penelope coming up with amazingly apropos inventions that will trump upcoming opponents through seeming happenstance. But then, through the course of events, she really starts maturing, correcting old mistakes and attempting to plan for the future. She also encounters more significant setbacks that get her to realize that she can't just rely on winging it. By the first third of the book, it had me hooked back in and I couldn't set the book down until I figured out how it ended. And oh, what an ending... the author has stated that there will be only one more book in Penelope's tale and he's definitely set her up to face significant challenges in the final volume.

This is a wonderful book. This is a terrible book (in a good way) - now I'm biting my nails waiting for the next book to resolve the final cliffhanger.Wonderful as it builds on the previous books; Penny is more Penny - smart, wisecracking, having lots of fun with mad science, a-ha-ha-haa!, and - as always - trying to come up with some way that she can tell her parents what she's been doing without too-horrible consequences. And, again as always, rejecting the simple and straightforward in favor of the gloriously complex.At the same time, this books resolves a number of threads from previous books, shows that a number of apparent throw-away lines weren't, and delivers a total head fake and false resolution in the title. Well done!A reader could - I think - pick up this book and enjoy it without having read the previous three mainline books, but knowing the background makes it a much richer experience. But be warned - I can't imagine reading and enjoying this book without wanting, desperately, to read the next to resolve all the open issues. The cliffhanger is well done - as sudden as it appears, the clues were all there going back to the first book. And - as cliffhangers go - it was quite satisfactory. Much as we may sympathize with her, Penny brought her Nemesis upon herself through sheer hubris despite many opportunities (and advice) on how to avoid it.The good news is that it *is* all scheduled to be resolved in the final book. But I expect lots of frantic (and mostly incorrect) speculation until then.

Please Don’t Tell My Parents I Have a Nemesis is the fourth book in its series, so I think it’s safe to assume those interested have read the previous books. If you haven’t I encourage you to do so, they’re excellent books and the series looks to be coming to a satisfying and action packed conclusion.For those who read the previous books and are on the fence, this book focuses much more on the Inscrutable Machine, especially focusing on Penny’s growth as a character. I found this to be a welcome change from the previous two books, which seemed more interested in expanding the world of the novels than growing our main trio. Those side characters are still around but in a supporting nature, which is great fun.The one word of caution I’d give is that, as the title states, this is part one of the series finale. While the previous three books ended in a resetting of the status quo (tune in next week, same inscrutable-time, same inscrutable channel!) the ending for this book sets up the next directly. And, unfortunately, the next book isn’t out at the time of my writing this.Still, I very much look forward to the next book and the final adventure hurrah of Penny and her gang.I did receive an advanced copy of this book for review purposes, which is why I got the review in so quickly. I also purchased it, because we need more books of this quality.

Great fun, interesting characters, and a take on the superpowers genre that is both innovative whilst still taking the best aspects of the tropes of the genre.Can't wait for the next book :)

Avoiding spoiler as much as possible the entire series up to this point has been building to this, and it was very worth it…

what went wrong??

First, this book is significantly shorter than previous ones in the series, maybe only half the length. Secondly, it ends on a cliffhanger and that cliffhanger comes out of nowhere. It's pretty clear that this book exists so the author can manoeuvre plots and characters into a place where he can wrap up the story with his next book, something he admits in a note at the end; as a result some of the content in this book can appear contrived.It's also clear, and has been since book three, that the author is far more interested in the setting he's created than in the main characters. That's a shame since for me the main characters, Penny in particular, are the significant draw for the story.If you're looking for more adventures of Bad Penny and the Inscrutable Machine, they're here, just far less of them. And don't go into this story expecting a satisfying ending; you won't get it. I honestly would have preferred this book just been turned into the first part of his next and final Inscrutable Machine story.

Dear Author, i discovered your Supervillian series a couple years ago, weirdly enough on TvTropes while searching for Fanmade Variants of White Wolf World of Darkness Games, which lead me to "Genius: The Transgression" and finally to your series, which were absurdly teasing for me, but as things go the lack of knowledge about there being e-book versions of them prevented me from buying and enjoying them at the time (I'm from Mexico and the local bookstores didn't have those books), go forward to a couple weeks ago and an aunt gifted me with an amazon gift card and out of nowhere i wondered what happened to those 2 supervillian books i had been interested, one search later i've found that not only they were part of a series, but that the release of the fifth book (if you include the precuel) was scant weeks from release and the author was working on the next (and i believe, final) instalment. Without further ado i bought them all and bingie read them from top to bottom expecting to familiarise myself with the story and characters in order to completely enjoy 'Nemesis', which i'm about to finish at the moment of this post, i thank you for this magnificent series that while not some supreme epic, it completely covers the purpose of it's existance stated in the first pages of book one "we've always wanted to rewrite our childhood" and it not only covers all expectatives but exceeds them to the point of not wanting the series to end, but like all good things in life and life itself? it must end sometime, so i thank you for the ride and for sharing these stories with us, looking forward to the next instalment and hope we can revisit Penny and her world at some point in the future.Sincerely Yours a recent but Faithful Reader.P.S. I've noticed some typos on the Kindle Version of 'Nemesis' especially this one:Unlike myself and Ray, Claire could not possibly look more like [b]myself[/b] if she’d worn an ‘I Am Claire Lutra’i think it should be Herself instead of myself, but then again i may be reading it wrong.