Author: Lisa Yee

Narrator: Mae Whitman

Series: DC Super Hero Girls #3

Publisher: Random House Books for Young Readers

Release Date: January 3, 2017

Rating: 5 Stars

Reviewer: Jessica Higgins

Batgirl takes the stage as Super Hero High’s newest super, but can she stand up to her first face off with a super villain?

Barbara Gordon has been working in the tech department at Super Hero High and loves being around all of the super heroes, especially her best friend Supergirl. But she has an alter ego called Batgirl.  She has managed to stay in the shadows until Supergirl calls her out for helping save Super Hero High.  This gesture offers her enrollment to the high school from Principal Waller, but there is still one person not happy that she has been fighting crime, her father.  Gotham City police commissioner Gordon has spent his life trying to keep his daughter safe and wants nothing more for her to be normal.  But eventually even he sees that she deserves a chance at Super Hero High.

As Batgirl attends Super Hero High, she finds that she has less in common with the supers than she had originally thought. Even so, she is still a tech wiz and gets the chance to be on a game show with some of the highest tech minds in the world.  She wins the show, but at a cost of having one of the contestants carry a personal vendetta against her.  When one of her inventions starts wreaking havoc on the internet throughout the world, Batgirl knows that she must dig deep within herself to fix what has happened.  If she can’t, civilization as we know it may be doomed.

I was provided with an audio version of this book to review.  Typically I shy away from audio books after a bad experience with a monotone narrator on an early morning drive.  Big mistake.  However, I decided to give this a try and I was very impressed.  Mae Whitman did a terrific job narrating throughout the book.  She kept me engaged and did a perfect job of inflection at just the right times.  I really enjoyed the story and wished I had the previous two books to listen to as well to get me caught up on the story.  Lisa Yee did a great job bringing together all of the DC comic super heroes and casting them as teenagers.  Harley Quinn’s personality really took center stage, but I enjoyed the way she played out Katana, Cheetah, and several others.  This is a really great series for young readers to either read or listen.  Highly recommended.

I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher. The views and opinions expressed throughout are mine.