One nice thing about bookstagram is that I get to know the Singapore bookish community! The Super Secret Book was one of the first few accounts that I found and I’ve been admiring the cute art that they post ever since. When I heard that The Super Secret book was out in ebook, I had to support a fellow Singaporean author and purchase a copy.

The Super Secret Book is about the Super Secret, a group of seven masked Super Heroes in Diamond City. Violet, aka superhero Koolara, spends her days juggling her commitments to her best friend, a huge Super Secret fan, with her identity as one of the Super Secret heroes. But as villains with actual superpowers show up, Koolara’s carefully separated worlds must collide if she is to save her home.

Koolara/Violet is a fun heroine and protagonist to follow. She’s clearly got her hands full juggling superhero duties with regular citizen duties and I thought her struggles about school and friends were pretty realistic. I also liked her interactions with her fellow superhero members and would have liked to see a lot more of that – my impression was that she worked with The Shock the most but I liked what I saw of Koolara with Lady Danger, The Mystery, and Electric Boy and wanted to see more.

That said, there one thing that didn’t make sense. For one, we are told that there are no people with superpowers – that’s why the rise of actual villains with powers is such a concern – but we are also told that the Super Secret don’t know each other’s real identities. If this is so, how did they form a group? Did they walk around with masks until they found each other and someone who could provide them with gadgets?

Another thing I wasn’t fond of was that each chapter ended with a “NEXT TIME: …” and a page or two of dialogue without any tags. I think it was because the story was first written as a serial, but since it’s being presented as a book, it doesn’t actually need it. Still, this is a relatively easy thing to ignore.

Overall, I thought the actual adventure and mystery was pretty fun and I can see Middle-Grade readers really enjoying this. It’s always nice to see Singapore as the inspiration for a book’s setting and I’m always here for it. While there are superhero and supervillain fights, nothing is super graphic and I think this will appeal to kids who like the Danger Dan series.