Young Blood (An Umbrella Academy YA Novel) (Unbrella Ac… (2024)

Hargreeves, as in Reginald Hargreeves. As in their mother who’s a machine, their butler who isn’t a human being, their house that isn’t a home but a training facility.

I’m a huge Umbrella Academy fan — truly, don’t get me started — so of course I preordered this book. It’s a young adult prequel novel, officially tying into the show and set during their teenaged years as a waning superhero team, after Number Five’s disappearance but before Ben’s death.

Since it’s YA, the plot is fairly simple: the seventeen-year-old kids want a fun evening out and to pretend to be normal for a night, so they sneak out for a college party only to run into more trouble than they expected. The prose is straightforward and not very complex either; it gets the job done.

But I loved loved loved the characterisations, and thought Sheinmel nailed it even with such a large set of rotating narrators: each team member’s quirks and strengths and weaknesses, their differing attitudes towards each other and their forced roles as superheroes-slash-child-soldiers, the way the academy’s once-sterling reputation is fading in the limelight, the love and support they all have for each other even as they bristle and argue and grind on each others’ nerves. It’s especially nice getting so much more insight to Ben and what he’s like and how he ticks, since we’ve seen so little of him in the show.

Most of all, I appreciated how you have this sense of their future fates looming over their heads, the way they’re sorting out who they want to be and what they want from the world, plus the ticking countdown timer as you’re aware that the Academy can’t (and won’t) contain all of them forever.

There’s also some good LGBTQA rep retained from the show, with Klaus being so openly pansexual, and I appreciated the disclaimer at the beginning that the book was written with the assistance of Elliot Page and other trans consultants for Viktor’s depiction as a young trans man still figuring out his identity. I think my only question mark is that there’s mention in the narration of “Viktor” being a name that was foisted on him by Mom, when clearly it’s actually talking about the deadname Vanya, while I feel like Viktor was in fact the liberating name he chose for himself? But I’m obviously not an expert in these issues so I defer to other readers; overall, though, I thought it was a thoughtful and respectful depiction.

I also just love all of these kids. Luther and Allison and Ben are pretty much my unabashed favourites, and I thought they were so well-done here. Luther in particular is a complicated character and I think even the show did him a disservice in season three, dumbing him down to just goofy himbo, while this book actually hit the important parts: his fierce love for his family, his role not just as arrogant team leader but as genuinely caring protector and tactical strategist, his dependable loyalty to their father and how that can be so easily manipulated. I’m very picky about how he’s depicted because he’s an easy one to get wrong, but this was great.

4.5 stars (rounded down), because I’m incapable of being unbiased about this canon, and it was such a treat to me personally. I randomly picked it up at midnight when it appeared on my e-reader, and it actually helped bust through a reading block I’d been stuck in, and I blazed through it in two days.

(3.5/5, rounded up)

Journey back in time to the Umbrella Academy’s earlier years in Alyssa Sheinmel’s The Umbrella Academy: Young Blood. Long before Reginald Hargreeves’ death reunited the Umbrella Academy and long before Ben’s tragic death, the Hargreeves siblings itched for a glimpse at freedom, for the chance to be normal kids. But what happens when they go out into the world, in search of a normal night at a college party? Can they escape their extraordinary lives? Or are they destined to save the day wherever they go? These are the questions at the heart of Sheinmel’s Young Blood - and they’re questions she answers to a tee. Young Blood feels just like an episode of The Umbrella Academy.

Balancing six different character arcs and an extraordinary threat, Sheinmel delivers a story that's sure to pleaseUmbrella Academy fans new and old alike. While the book struggles to deliver fully satisfying character arcs to each of the Hargreeves siblings, it never fails to be anything less than entertaining. If anything, Young Blood makes a great case for an ongoing series of Umbrella Academy YA novels - just with a narrow focus next time. A fast-paced, page-turner of a novel, The Umbrella Academy: Young Blood thrills, entertains, and packs a pretty good punch - however brief it might be.

Full review at Geek Vibes Nation upon the novel's publication.

A review copy was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts are my own.