My Evil Twin Is a Supervillain

David Solomons' My Evil Twin Is a Supervillain is a very funny superhero story for 9 year olds about a boy who cannot stand the better version of himself.

What happens

Luke Parker is the comic book expert in his family. He knows everything. He is also the one who missed out.

An alien called Zorbon the Decider once turned up at the tree house to hand out superpowers. Luke had nipped off for a wee. His big brother Zack got the lot.

Now a second Luke has arrived from a parallel Earth. Same face, same voice, same head full of comics. The only difference is that this one held it in, so this one got the powers.

He calls himself Stellar. He has rocket-powered shoes and suspiciously white teeth.

Everyone adores him. Zack thinks he is hi-lari-ous. Serge has catered a welcome party. Lara wants to interview him for the school paper. And Luke is left standing in the corner watching himself be charming.

(He has started a list of nicknames for him. Luke-Out-Here-Comes-Trouble is one of the kinder ones.)

Then Stellar explains why he has come. A thirty-storey megademon called Gorgon the World-Eater is about to swallow his world and he needs Star Lad to help him stop it. Star Lad. Not Luke.

The whole thing is told in Luke's voice and his voice is the joke. He gives you his real opinion of everybody while working very hard to sound like a reasonable person. He also measures his own life against comics all day long, which is funny and is also, quite clearly, how he avoids thinking about anything that hurts.

This one follows on from the first book about Luke and Zack. It explains the wee, so nobody will be lost, but the jokes land much harder if your reader already knows this lot.

There is a thread running along underneath the jokes. Lara's parents have separated and her dad has moved out. That has already happened by the time the book starts, so it is not a shock waiting later on. Luke also notices in passing that his mum and dad do not seem to care about much any more. He handles all of it by joking, and at one point he cheerfully works out that children whose parents split up seem to end up with new phones.

If that is close to home for your reader, it might be worth reading those bits near them. If it is not, it will slide by as more of Luke being Luke.

What to read next

If they want to go back to where all this started, My Brother Is a Superhero is the one where Zack gets the powers. Luke spends most of it giving his brother advice about capes.