More Than Jamie Baker by Kelly Oram

Synopsis:
Jamie Baker, the only girl in the world with superpowers, has now accepted who she is and learned to control her power. Not to mention she has the best boyfriend on the planet. Life is finally looking good. But the day she witnesses an accident and decides not to save the guy out of fear of being exposed, she realizes that simply being Jamie Baker isn’t enough.

After seeing Jamie so wrecked with guilt, the ever-helpful Ryan Miller decides it’s time to make all of his fantasies about turning his girlfriend into an honest-to-goodness superhero become a reality.

Of course, coming up with a decent Super Name and fending off all of Ryan’s attempts to get her into spandex aren’t the only problems Jamie faces. The more her alter ego starts to make headlines, the harder it becomes for Jamie to hide her extracurricular activities from her best friend, the government, radical scientists, and the mysterious new guy who is determined to steal her from her boyfriend.

    

My Review:
3.5 stars — Oooooo, majorly conflicted!!!  (also, spoilers for book one if you haven’t read it)

OK, so part of my problem is that I kind of got a bit spoiled on parts of this book, just from being in Ms. Oram’s fan club on Facebook and seeing parts of discussions go by no matter how much I tried to avoid them like the plague.  I can honestly say I don’t know how my thoughts on different parts would have played out if I’d been able to read this book organically without seeing any discussion about it.  So if you haven’t read this book yet, TRY WITH EVERYTHING IN YOU to do a better job of avoiding reading anything about it, b/c apparently people don’t realize what is a spoiler (even just small things).  So there’s a part of me that’s disappointed in that, though there’s a tiny other part of me that thinks I may have noticed things happening and figured things out early on even without the spoiler.  And yes, I get that I’m being extremely vague, but I’m trying to avoid what was done to me, you know??  (perhaps I’ll add a spoiler section to my Goodreads review so I can discuss it)

OK, so I loved having Ryan and Jamie back.  I was super surprised that this book was a bit after the end of BJB.  For some reason I guess I just expected it to pick right up where the first book left off, not be a year later(ish).  But it was nice to see Ryan and Jamie fully entrenched in their relationship and enjoying each other.  I loved their banter and sweet moments, but occasionally I felt like something was missing between the two of them…but I can’t pinpoint it, so maybe it was just that I love them so much I always want more.

I am still conflicted about the Mike/Becky subplot.  There are parts of me that enjoyed the uniqueness of how it was dealt (what story actually bothers to pay any attention to the rapist?), but it’s just inherently uncomfortable then and I’m honestly not sure how forgiving a person I am personally.  I was also still kind of blown away that Jamie kept it from Ryan, no matter how she rationalized it.

And while I enjoyed Jamie’s conflict over the accident situation, I sometimes felt like it was drawn out longer than I was expecting…or maybe not drawn out so much as revisited too often.

I loved seeing her become Chelsea’s Angel, though I was disappointed that her disguise wasn’t very disguising.  But her heroics were so very Jamie-like, she really embraced that role.

Having seen teasers for the 3rd book, and having left reading this book so late, I wasn’t at all surprised or taken aback by the epilogue to this book…so I guess it didn’t bother me as much as it seems to have with other people.  I could totally see it happening in that way.

My basic problem with this book all centers around one element.  And unfortunately it’s a major element.  So I’m unsure how I’m going to enjoy the next book since that element still exists.  It’s having me waffling between rounding down or up on this one, and I honestly didn’t expect that since I loved BJB so much.  So like I said, very conflicted.  It had a lot of great elements, but that one could just overshadow all the good ones.  🙁