The book The Unstoppable Wasp tells a story about Hope van Dyne, aka the Wasp in Marvel Comics. In this story she is trying to learn how to balance all of her competing interests, such as running her G.I.R.L. lab, moving, and learning to drive. However, when she discovers something unexpected left by one of her birth parents, all of these desires continue to be challenged. I enjoyed reading this book. I thought it portrayed someone dealing with mental illness in an interesting and realistic way. I also thought that it dealt with the importance of learning to prioritize as a teenager while also challenging some of the predominant views in Silicon Valley. I thought there where some unnecessary plot holes at the end of the book, but otherwise I recommend it for teenagers.

Nadia had an absolutely horrid childhood.  She never knew her parents and was raised by the enemy.  But she is a brilliant scientist and invents things right and left.  Although she makes a friend, she and the friend are betrayed and Nadia and her G.I.R.L. scientist friends have to scramble to "save the world" .  For fans of superheroes or just believe in girl power...this book is for you.

“We know who you we are, we know why we’re here. And we all know that when we’re together, there’s nothing in this whole world that can stop us.” 

I’m not the biggest Marvel comics fan but I do love the movies…with that being said this was such a fun read!  The author adds in a lot of marvel super hero reference that any marvel fan (casual or super fan) would really enjoy. There was also a ton of pop culture references and even though I didn’t know them all, it was still fun to read the ones that I did know! And Nadia’s science facts and all the little footnotes were a nice addition to the story. 

The story is about Nadia Van Dyne (the Wasp) and her friends who are all apart of the group G.I.R.L. However most of the book does focus on Nadia and how’s she’s learning how to manage life, work and having bipolar and learning that it’s ok to need help from the people that care about you. 

My only complaint was the story was a little predictable but let’s just blame that on the fact that most super hero stories usually are. But overall I really enjoyed the book! 

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an eARC of this book!

*I received an advance reader copy in exchange for a honest review*

This is a spin off of the Ant-Man Marvel Universe. I liked how there was an influx of new characters and a lot of girl power driving the story. 
Unfortunately, this book isn't for me, however I can see many young adult readers being drawn to it in order to continue to be immersed into the Marvel Universe.

This was amazing. I am usually pretty critical of the novels written about superheroes, but this one was perfect. The author does a great job of giving background about Nadia's life and her parents. The occasional "science facts" were a lot of fun and helped add to the book and Nadia's character. I also loved how they introduced new characters with a little image and details about them. It made it very easy to keep them straight.
I would highly recommend this book for fans of superheroes, marvel fans, and YA fans.

The Unstoppable Wasp is a super fun YA novel branching off of the comic series of the same name. As someone only fairly familiar with the comic book story, I felt comfortable jumping into the plot without much context. In fact, the Science Fact sections of the book were enormously helpful and a neat way of introducing exposition to the reader without weighing down the story. 
While I wish more characters had been fleshed out, I was impressed by the way they interacted with one another, making the novel not just about Nadia, but about how she has the support from her team. In this way, being a superhero is not just a one-girl task but instead a venture that one does not have to be alone, reflecting the realities of life (superhero or not). This very much allows readers to feel that Nadia is relatable, only underscored by the fact that the story also addresses mental health -- a very important subject, especially to be introduced in YA.

I love this book! I am a huge fan of the Unstoppable Wasp comics, and this novel perfectly captures the character’s voice. It is snarky and funny, but also deals with issues like mental heath and feminism. It absolutely did one of my favorite superhero’s justice.

3.5/5

What I Liked
- Nadia was a great character. I was apprehensive about her at first, but her character development throughout the book made me like her more and more as the book went on.
- The pace of the story. It felt almost like a superhero movie. There was a bit of a lull in the middle, but other than that the story flowed really well.
- The Marvel and pop culture references.
- The science. I love the "Nadia's Science Facts" sections of the books. It allowed for the author to explain complex scientific concepts prevalent to the story in easily accessible ways.

What I Didn't Like
- There weren't any side characters that I felt any great attachment to. They either weren't featured enough for me to take much notice or they had crappy behavior that was never explained through sufficient backstories.
- There were a number of moments where the book felt a little like a self-help book which many people might actually enjoy. However, I fall in the group of people who find self-help books cringy, so these moments marred the story a bit for me.

Thanks to Netgalley and Disney Book Group for the Advanced Readers Copy.

I  heard ace spectrum and I came running. I can't keep up with all the recent novelizations of comic book worlds, but once I heard w/w SC and ace spectrum MC plus Marvel I was so sold I immediately requested The Unstoppable Wasp on Netgalley! The Unstoppable Wasp is such a great story because I think we can have this perception that being a superhero is a singular role. But in reality, it takes so many people to get a superhero where they need to be, for backup, for tech, for everything. The Unstoppable Wasp examines us asking for help and for accepting help. 

Nadia is on the ace spectrum, but she's also bipolar and deals with coping tactics as well as therapy. Nadia feels this almost crushing sense of responsibility and also drive for productivity - which felt too much pointed at my own life - and so taking a breath and asking for help is a huge struggle. Maybe it's because these two issues felt so close to me, that I loved Nadia so much? She is juggling all these things and feelings of commitment, that she feels so overwhelmed and wanting to take on more and more. I don't want to delve more into why we clicked so much, because that would expose me, but if you ever felt this obsession with productivity you would love Nadia.

I was drawn into reading about this character, about whom I knew nothing, by the previous legacies of Ant-Man (Ant-Men?) and Wasp, as well as by previous Marvel properties-based YA novels. I'm so glad to have read about Nadia, her friends, her role models, and her world. While parts of the novel were predictable, the way they were handled showed nuance and faith in the reader. Overall, I think all teens - and especially girls - will enjoy Nadia. She is by no means a perfect character, and that's the point - no matter what powers and strengths you have, we all struggle somewhere, and that helps us all feel a little more normal.

The Unstoppable Wasp relies too heavily on exposition and references to prior Marvel canon. The reader has to get 50+ pages in before there's much explanation about exactly who the main character is or her connection to the Pym family. The storyline of this book doesn't agree with some of the characterizations and plot lines of the MCU that most fans are already familiar with.

The positives are the snippets of scientific facts throughout the book, the diversity of the characters, and the inclusion of a character with a diagnosed mental illness. This book may be a good fit for another reader, but I found it difficult to read.

Took me a minute to get into the world here as I have not followed Marvel movies or the Unstoppable Wasp graphic novels.  I'm sure for those who are up to date on those things, you would have no problem at all jumping full on into Nadia's story.  As for me, once I got a few chapters in and had the lay of the land, this was nonstop adventure with compelling characters all around.  Love the girl power theme and Nadia with all her strengths and imperfections.

I love the way a female character takes powerful center stage in this book. It’s full of clearly-written adventure and populated by characters that readers are sure to recognize. Well done.

The Unstoppable Wasp by Sam Maggs is a slow burn that never fully ignites. The story follows the new Wasp, Nadia Van Dyne (as a huge Janet fan I was sad to see this was Hank’s daughter and not related to Janet) as she struggles with her mental health and coming to terms with the fact that she will never meet her biological parents. Nadia was raised in the Red Room, yes that Red Room that gave us Black Widow and also most of the new female teen heroes that Marvel is throwing at us. But Nadia is now living in New York and has started her own female science group called G.I.R.L.  an acronym I don’t remember what it stands for but there you have it (I googled it Genius In action Research Labs..I guess G.I.A.R.L didn’t fit the agenda not this author’s fault though). G.I.RL. is here to help fight crime and do science. Nadia has inherited the Pym Particles and a Wasp outfit, but since this isn’t an origin story novel we don’t get to find out any of those detail, they are relying a little on that the person picking this up will be someone who has read the comics.  So her and her team of extremely diverse teen female scientists are carrying out important missions for the Pym lab in New Jersey. 
One of the weirder parts of this novel is the fact that it doesn’t seem to rely on any of the major or notable heroes that the casual Marvel fan would know, you have Nadia and the G.I.R.L team, who have been doing well in comic form, Janet Van Dyne, who I believe died for a while in the comics and was almost completely written out of the cinematic universe, Bobbi or Mockingbird who was briefly used in the TV Show Agents of SHIELD but isn’t really a prominent feature anywhere and Jarvis. It is kind of a thrown together team but the team dynamic works really well it just feels weird that there isn’t even mention or communication with any of the other teen heroes, isn’t Kamala Kahn also from Jersey? Those little moments of connection could have really helped to keep the plot interesting.
Instead what we got was Nadia dealing with her inner struggle of being a teenage girl who went through crazy torture at the Red Room and now is also going to therapy for her Bipolar disorder. This might be one of the most interesting things about the story, how Nadia’s friends and family watch out for her and don’t shy away from checking on her mental health and being concerned about her becoming manic. This is awesome for a middle grade-teen book. It normalizes Bipolar in a way that isn’t just watching someone crash this is someone who already recognizes that they have it and are living with it. I feel that a lot of times when it comes to books of this age group it is always about the discovery of it and rarely about living with it. The book actually does a lot of things right in areas like this and had it not been a book about a group of superheroes or a hero in particular I would have enjoyed it so much more. But unfortunately this book is about a superhero so you would expect a few fight scenes or something but until the last 20% of the book nothing is really happening. 
We are going through Nadia’s journey of self discovery as she tries to reconnect with her dead mother through a series of lists found in a journal, we are watching as she tries to reach out to other tech people to gain information on a new piece of tech she was gift, we watch as she gets mad at the rest of her team for having things to do that aren’t being at her beck and call (mind you she is the only one of the team not in high school). Nadia is just not a compelling character because she just seems so uninterested in anything and manages to somehow do nothing while doing things. After reading the whole book I can tell you that Nadia is a teenager (not sure I think 16), she grew up in Russia, she is Hank Pym’s daughter (I have many questions about this and need to find the comics that explain it) and she likes Sailor Moon. We see her going through a series of lists that her mother made that included things like playing in the rain and watching the Star Wars films and while it is mentioned she is doing these things we don’t see how they affect her. We do find out that she feels they don’t bring her any closer to her mom but that should be a given since she is experiencing these things without her even if they were things her mom wanted to experience with her. 
I really wanted to like this book and the last 20% of the book was very compelling and ended too soon but the rest of the book just didn’t give a lot of depth of substance to make me care about any of the characters. I can’t tell you any of their names except Nadia and the ones I already knew or anything really about them. I really wished this book had been better but to be fair most of the Marvel teen books that have been released have fallen short of the goal.
Pros of this book:
Great representation, so much representation
Really interesting villain.
I’m a sucker for Janet Van Dyne and her designing clothes
Cons of this book
Slow
A bit boring
Both too much information and not enough information all at the same time.
1.5 out of 5 stars

Oof, this one just wasn't for me. The main character annoyed the living shit out of me. She was so self centered and hypocritical. I couldn't stand her. I was kind of hoping to get some great girl group moments and we barely got any of it. For the rest I think this book overexplained the most simple and unnececary things. It honestly just felt like the author was talking down to the reader and those moments seemed more aimed at a three year old. It just dragged the story down A LOT. I also think this book relies too much on the fact that the reader knows a lot about Marvel already. That kind of bothered me as this is supposed to be a stand alone book but it needs you to have A LOT of prior knowledge. It especially bothered me as some unnececary sciency stuff was overexplained. The author could have better put in more effort in actually explaining stuff nececary to the plot rather than random things. But yeah, besides all that I do think the story was interesting and I read this pretty quickly so it could have been worse.

A great intro to the character and GIRL for young readers. The writing style is fun, the conflicts (both personal and super villain) fit the age group, and the design of the book is super cute. A bit info-dumpy at times, but that’s hard to avoid with franchise characters with this much history.

I love Nadia Van Dyne. I loved the Jeremy Whitley comics and I was so excited to hear that Sam Maggs was writing a novel about her! The exploration of Nadia's mental illness is delicately handled, and I really appreciate that. I also loved the portrayal of the friendship between the G.I.R.L.s. The story about Nadia wanting connection and the AI makes a lot of sense for her character. Overall, really fun book, though it will mostly be enjoyed by those who have a working understanding of the backstory. Recommended!

Maggs perfectly captures the feeling and character of Nadia Van Dyne that is welcoming to new readers and established fans. Readers who have already read the Unstoppable Wasp comics will find the story true to character and a progression rather than a rehashing of the same things they already know while those new to Nadia will find perfect introductions to the large cast of characters and pertinent background stories. 

As someone who read and enjoyed the comics, here are a few of my highlights from Maggs' Unstoppable Wasp:
- The look into online privacy and data mining
- The science facts throughout the book
- The balance between action and the exploration of family, friendship, and health

I love anything Marvel. Great characters, plot, twists, and action. A story with a strong female MC. A really great read.

If we can’t have an Unstoppable Wasp comic book right now, this novel is the next best thing! I was worried about how the transition to prose would go, but Sam Maggs perfectly captures the vibe of the comic and Nadia’s voice here. And this book is so. in. continuity with the original comic series, it’s insane. I’ve read a few Marvel novels, but this is the first I’ve read that tries to establish itself as apart of the comics continuity 100%. I am the target audience for this novel, definitely, but it may be hard for readers new to the Unstoppable Wasp title to get into it. There are references to all sorts of Marvel comics characters and events, and it may be overwhelming— but I absolutely loved it. The plot wasn’t exactly unique or unpredictable, but it had heart. It was so much fun to be back with Nadia and the G.I.R.L.s, and they’re in good hands. I’d love to see the comics revived, but I wouldn’t mind another prose novel as well if it’ll be this high of quality. 5/5 stars.