Actually Super, Adi Alsaid
Actually Super, Adi Alsaid
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Actually Super

Author: Adi Alsaid

Narrator: Yu-Li Alice Shen

Unabridged: 7 hr 4 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 08/22/2023


Synopsis

A globetrotting novel that takes a determined teen from Japan to Australia and to Argentina and Mexico on a quest to prove that humanity is more good than bad from the author of Let’s Get Lost and Before Takeoff.

Isabel is having an existential crisis. She’s three years into high school, and everything she’s learned has only shaken her faith in humanity. Late one night, she finds herself drawn to a niche corner of the internet—a forum whose members believe firmly in one thing: that there are indeed people out in the world quietly performing impossible acts of heroism. You might even call them supers. No, not in the comic book sense—these are real people, just like each of us, but who happen to have a power or two. If Isabel can find them, she reasons, she might be able to prove to herself that humanity is more good than bad.

So, the day she turns 18, she sets off on a journey that will take her from Japan to Australia, and from Argentina to Mexico, with many stops along the way. She longs to prove one—just one—super exists to restore her hope for the future.

Will she find what she’s looking for? And how will she know when—if—she does?

About The Author

ADI ALSAID was born and raised in Mexico City. He attended college at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He’s now back in Mexico City, where he writes, coaches basketball, and makes every dish he eats as spicy as possible. In addition to Mexico, he’s lived in Tel Aviv, Las Vegas, and Monterey, California. His previous YA books include Before Takeoff, Let’s Get Lost, Never Always Sometimes, North of Happy, Brief Chronicle of Another Stupid Heartbreak, and We Didn’t Ask for This.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Caylie on August 19, 2023

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC of this novel. 3.5/5 stars. I really enjoyed the premise of this as Izzy leaves everything she's ever known to go search for those with super powers (and also escaping a conspiracy theorist and conservative father). The search for supers takes Izzy......more

Goodreads review by B on August 25, 2023

This man. He cuts my to my fucking core every time. I don’t know where he comes up with these ideas or how he writes so damn beautifully but I’ve never written down quotes to come back to by any other author. Every time he writes- no matter if it’s about love or grief or life or living or growing up......more

Goodreads review by Chris on May 08, 2024

A quietly suspenseful, surprisingly life-affirming mystery about a young woman's quest to find some kind of goodness in the world that she can believe in. The day she turns 18, having left school a year early and earned her GED, Isabel hops on a plane across the world. For years, she has been part of......more

Goodreads review by Crystal on August 13, 2023

Well. This is the first book to give me goosebumps. As someone who often feels the ills of the world are very heavy and overwhelming, this book deeply resonated with me. Isabel grew up with a grandmother whose parents survived the holocaust and whose father thought and later spoke terrible things ab......more

Goodreads review by Jen on May 29, 2023

I thoroughly enjoyed this story. Isabel is every teeenager, trying to sort out what she believes in, what is real, what is true, and how it all fits into what she knows of the world. She is brave and strong, and knows her own mind. Then it goes a little left field. I don't know of any 17 year old wh......more


Quotes

"Enviable travels, strong characterization, and an original premise that works." —Kirkus Reviews

"A sincere and thought-provoking tale." —Publishers Weekly

"Fueled by a clever premise and with empathic characters, the novel is intriguing and highly readable....the book is (wait for it) super!" —Booklist