Review: Archenemies by Marissa Meyer

Archenemies (Renegades #2)
Author: Marissa Meyer
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Publication Date: November 6, 2018
Pages: 474
Format: Hardcover/Own

Time is running out. Together, they can save the world. But are they each other's worst nightmare?

Nova's double life is about to get a lot more complicated:

As Insomnia, she is a full-fledged member of the Renegades, a syndicate of powerful and beloved superheroes. She works with Adrian's patrol unit to protect the weak and maintain order in Gatlon City.

As Nightmare, she is an Anarchist—a group of villains who are determined to destroy the Renegades. Nova wants vengeance against the so-called heroes who once failed her when she needed them the most.

But as Nova, her feelings for Adrian are deepening, despite the fact that he is the son of her sworn enemies and, unbeknownst to Nova, he has some dangerous secrets of his own.

In this second installment of the Renegades trilogy, Nova, Adrian, and the rest of their crew—Ruby, Oscar, and Danna—are faced with escalating crime in Gatlon City, while covert weapons and conflicting missions have Nova and Adrian questioning not only their beliefs about justice but also the feelings they have for each other.

The line between good and evil has been blurred, but what's clear to them both is that too much power could mean the end of their City—and the world—as they know it.

Review: I enjoyed this even more than I enjoyed Renegades! This is such a great sequel and really brings everything to a whole new level. The first thing I wanna point out that I really loved is that my biggest complaint with Renegades was taken away with Archenemies. I felt like there was so many slow parts of Renegades and it could have easily been shortened and Archenemies didn't have that feel. It is shorter than Renegades, but its all good cuz I felt like we were constantly getting things that contributed to the story moving forward. Whether it was something involving the Renegades, the Anarchists, Nova and Adrian's relationship, their feelings about what the council was doing, etc. It gave Archenemies much better pacing for me. 

I think one of the things I really loved about the story is that we see Adrian also start to doubt the council like Nova already does after the reveal and implementation of Agent N. Nova of course was immediately disgusted over Agent N's use, but Adrian was also not pleased. We see him struggle with it. While he sees the good that Agent N could do by neutralizing some of the incredibly bad villains, and even voices the good of it being used sometimes, he also sees it as wrong and questions whether it needs to be used against anyone that does wrong or is even classified as a villain. I really feel this is where Adrian starts to see the lines being blurred between right and wrong. 

We also see both Adrian and Nova really fight themselves regarding their feelings for each other. Adrian initially fights between whether to pursue Nova and see if she likes him back, and then feels confused cuz he knows she likes him back, but there's so many moments where she doesn't seem to want to pursue anything between them. Nova struggles a lot with this. Obviously because of her being undercover she doesn't want to pursue a relationship with Adrian because she knows it will eventually have to end, but she also really, truly, genuinely likes him. And I feel like we even see her second guess being against the Renegades once or twice being around Adrian and his family and seeing so many of them just being human. Obviously she still defaults back to the Anarchists. But we see glimpses of her doubting thanks to the relationships and bonds she's built. 

I thought the ending was definitely interesting for a number of reasons. We see Nova almost get caught a number of times as her Anarchist alias, Nightmare. We see Adrian fall apart because of what happens to Max when Nova is trying to escape Renegades headquarters as Nightmare. We see Adrian's dads realize they should have listened to Adrian and Nova about the doubts about Ace Anarchy's helmet being as secure and impossible to get to as they claimed. We see Adrian finally reveal being the Sentinel to a few of his friends. And we even get a huge shocker regarding Ace which I'm sure is going to play a big role in Supernova! I'm definitely excited to see what Supernova holds for everyone, and will Adrian and Nova please just reveal their secret identities to each other. God lord. I thought we'd get that in Archenemies but nope.