TJ Klune never fails to capture your heart with the romance, magic, and breathtaking ability to weave a story. The plot comes to life off the page - which is known for every book by him - and explores what happens when everything changes. This serves as an amazing finale and serves up a satisfying conclusion that will have you on the edge of your seat to see what happens next.

undecided on rating

Never in my life have I ever been so conflicted on a review. When The Extraordinaries came out, I was in love. TJ Klune is honestly one of the funniest writers on the planet. Truly, I had such a joyous experience reading the first book. The second was still great, not as good. That ending was truly something special. My jaw was on the off floor and I was in a daze hours after reading it. But this book was confusing as heck.

I thought the action would pick up immediately after the sequel. But it did not. And for spoiler reasons, I won't go into detail. But let me just say, I didn't like it. It was obvious from the moment it started what was what and what was happening. And while I may not be the target audience for this book, I still just didn't care for that "big crazy twist" It just felt silly.

And while I enjoyed the banter, some of it felt too invasive. I am all for parents embarrassing their children, It's life, it's realistic, it happens to everyone. But Nick's dad just crossed too many boundaries for me. It wasn't funny. It was frustrating. I honestly think if this was my parent, I would run away and never look back.

And the final cherry on top, let's talk about the police situation again. I covered a bit of this in my first and second review. But I just wanted to add that, I hated that the final goal of the bad guy was the make the police bigger and more powerful. That felt incredibly tone deaf. Given the criticism from the first and second book regarding Nick's dad and his abuse of power, that felt icky.

Klune has so many other amazing books. I would highly recommend any of his other books before this one.

*** Note. giving this book a neutral 3 star rating since I am undecided on what to properly rate this book.

A perfect conclusion to one of my favorite trilogies ever! This book brought me so much joy, if you haven’t picked up this series, do it now!

DNF
I only managed to make it about 10% through this ebook.
I really enjoyed the first book Extraordinaries, and I liked the second book Flash Fire, but Heat Wave just hasn't appealed to me in the same way. I think I am still processing the twist ending in Flash Fire with certain characters making a return, and I am trying to reconcile those feelings with the reasons it happened that way.
The raging teenage hormones that started this novel were suppose to be light-handed humor before the more serious events happened, but it came off too crass and eye-rolling for me.

I didn’t realize this was the third book in a series. I haven’t read the others and it’s taking me forever to get to them.
UPDATE: couldn’t get into the first one. Read 60%. Felt whiney and didn’t connect to the character. #dnf My ARC was provided by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

T J Klune does it again!!! He writes with such amazing empathy and it is so fun to read his books. The characters are so well developed and I enjoyed seeing how it all played out

O.M.G. I didn’t think T.J. Klune could top Flash Fire, but they did and I am beyond words.

First I do not think I have ever laughed so hard during an entire book and that includes books written by “comedians”. I was walking Miss Isabella and laughing out loud and bending over wheezing at times because I couldn’t catch my breath because seriously Nick’s brain. (smh)

The premise is amazing and on point. I didn’t see it coming. I kept trying to figure out the how and yeah I still didn’t. When an author can keep everything fresh and keep you guessing you know the book, never mind this series, is a winner.

Nick’s brain…I don’t even know what to say. I once again will probably be giving the “Dad of the Year” award to Aaron Bell just for his safe sex talks alone. O.M.G. I cannot say that enough because if I didn’t wear a diaper I would have been peeing my pants. Kudos to Klune for dealing frankly with sex education in a love story. I am always saying that it can be done and once again I have proof!!!

As for the secondary cast, seriously who can pick a fave? The Dad Squad is the best - I really want to see the costume pictures. I love the core crew.

There isn’t anything I do not love about Heat Wave other than I waited so long to read it.

I am so sad to see this trilogy come to an end. I have loved these ridiculous boys for so long but WOW what a send off. I should never doubt that TJ Klune will stick the landing because he always does.

The plot of this is a rollercoaster with so many twists and turns that I would never spoil in a review. What I will say is this. By the end of the first chapter, my anxiety spiked and it didn’t die down until the book ended. This is a compliment. It’s that I didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t know where the story was going to go or how characters could be… doing what they were doing.

If you love Nick Bell, you’ll love this. If you love Nick embarrassing himself and everyone around him, you’ll love this. If you’ve gone with this cast of characters for the first two books and understand how tongue-in-cheek yet genuine these books are, you’ll love this.

A beautiful way to wrap up this story.

5 stars

Did I forget to post this review? Yup. I was scrolling through my Net Galley and saw whoops, never did this one. So here I am, trying to remember my July thoughts in March. ⁣
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First, let me just say I loved The Extraordinaries series. Nicky, Seth, Gibby, Jazz all had my heart in their own special way. While the actual plot of Heat Wave really wasn’t my favorite, this series, this ending was wonderful.⁣
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I’ll be honest, I was so confused the first 1/4 of the book. Is it a flashback? It is a suppressed memory? What is happening?! It makes sense after the big reveal but I wanted to throw in the towel because it was confusing. But I stayed, because dang it, I adore them. And I’m glad. I did. ⁣
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The ending was beautiful. Ugh. It was so sweet. I love a full circle actual closure on endings to where I can’t quip with a “but wait you could do thisss and we could get another book!” TJ Klune said “this is the end and this is how it’s done” and it was done wonderfully. I had baby tears of joy that spread across my face. It was wonderful. ⁣
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Overall, a great ending to a wonderful series. Heat Wave is out now. Thanks @torteen for the copy. Also, Michael Lesley is AMAZING on audio from @macmillan.audio if you have a chance to check it out.⁣ (I got to listen to a chapter after realizing I put it on hold with my library and @libby.app came through 😂)⁣
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QOTD: Favorite superhero?

TJ Klune's Heat Wave is a fun, satisfying conclusion to his YA trilogy The Extraordinaries. If you've read the first two books, you know what to expect here. Klune has revolutionized the genre by any means, but it's clear he cares for these characters and his readers. It's a fun time, and I continue to marvel at the frequency of his output.

In all honesty, this one took me awhile to finish. I thoroughly enjoyed the first two books of the series but this one I think took me at least half the book to truly get into and once I did, I flew through it very fast. The mystery of the return of Nick's mom was very interesting to unravel. Other than that, it was a very satisfying end to a great series.

Boring. Not creative. Cliche. Almost impossible to finish. Don’t care for the characters, don’t care for the problems, don’t care for the writing style. Just not my thing.

Thank you to NetGalley, Macmillan-Tor/Forge, and Tor Teen for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This was an absolutely amazing conclusion to an amazing series. This is definitely a series that I will be reading over and over again. Each book was better than the last and they were all so much fun to read. I had a hard time putting this book down and I basically read the entire book in one sitting.

I don't believe that the author has any plans currently to continue writing books set in this universe but if he ever changes his mind, I will definitely read them all. As soon as this book was published, I knew that I needed to get a physical copy as well and I am so glad that I was able to add this amazing series to my collection.

I highly recommend this trilogy and I hope that everyone enjoys these books as much as I did.

Thanks to netgalley for a copy of this one. I wasnt quite a fan of this book and couldnt keep my interest unfortunately. It was definitely a slow burn and took me awhile to get through as I kept setting it down. Hopefully others will enjoy it more than me.

A satisfying conclusion to this YA fantasy trilogy, I felt this matured with each book, as well it should as our teen hero Nick and his loyal friends all go through a lot, learning about life, love, and themselves!

When we last saw Nick and company, they were a solid incognito crime fighting team, and Nick was trying to come into his newly realized powers and potential responsibilities, all the while dealing with familial secrets and betrayals. Flash Fire left readers wondering about the future fate of all Extraordinaires as nemesis Simon Burke introduced a seemingly benevolent offer to cure their powers for the safety of the public, hiding a yet to be seen but inevitable sinister self serving plan. Toss in an off kilter ex-boyfriend who had escaped prison and an unbelievable cliffhanger reveal, and there were many questions left to be answered.

Though this plot line started out nebulous and confusing, what unfolds was a scary twist. Many might not like this crazy development, but I felt it ultimately played out nicely, forcing the gang and their wonderful parents, friends, and family to really band together to fight Simon Burke’s evil maniacal agenda.

What I truly appreciate about these 3 books is that with Klune’s deserved popularity and move into a more mainstream avenue, I’m grateful that a bigger publisher in no way impeded his unique and trademark brand of humor, style, and over the top brazenness. This doesn’t hold back on touchy topics, the uncomfortableness of growing up, the squeamish/embarrassing but relevant challenges that all teens face, and Klune does it with frankness, truth, and outrageous hilarity and always with plenty of heart. It’s been a hot minute since I laughed so hard that I was crying, and then I soon found myself crying for real because of all the feels.

Overall, though some things in plot execution didn’t pan out as I wanted (do they 100% truly ever?), this still had a fitting conclusion that fell in line with the themes and messages of each book. Things can’t always end perfectly (tho it was pretty darn close), and that’s how life goes - sometimes it’s tough, sometimes it’s really really great, and often it isn’t fair.

Sooooo bad guys are going to do bad. Good guys are going to their darnedest to stop them. There are certainly some setbacks, but this is fantasy fiction after all so don’t be too worried. Rest assured that our titular hero Nick definitely remains true to himself and learns plenty along the way as all YA stories go, leaving me with a big fat smile at the very end!

I have always and will always be a fan of TJ Klune’s writing. The way he expresses love especially queer love is something that I don’t think any other writer I’ve come across can convey. Heat Wave is no different.

I really loved the progression of Nick and Seth’s relationship in the last book of this series. They’ve come so far from Seth pining after Nick to them finally getting together to sharing their first physical experience and it was tastefully done. I’m sure some people would be against a sex scene in a Young Adult novel but teenagers have sexual experiences and to completely ignore that especially queer experiences is detrimental to the teenagers that might pick up this book.

The thing I didn’t like about this book was the over use of comedic moments. It felt forced and cheesy most of the time. I get why TJ might have used an excessive use of comedy, this is a YA novel after all, but for me personally I got tired of them and it brought the rating down. For the first time I was skimming some parts of the book which I usually never do for a TJ Klune book.

The epilogue however. God that was so good. I loved the brief snapshot of their futures and what had happened in between the end of the book and the jump ahead. Such a perfect ending to the trilogy.

Overall still a solid book for me and Nick will always be a good time.

This was touching and beautiful and fun, and I love how expressive TJ Klunes writing is. Can’t wait to read more of his works

TJ Klune turns his considerable talents to the world of superheroes--and fan fiction--in this YA trilogy. Filled with big emotions, big action, and lots of affection for the genre this series has something for everyone. A great follow up for fans of Klune's adult market novels and a great starting point for readers who haven't found them yet.

Heat Wave was the emotional, explosive ending to the Extraordinaries trilogy! I have had such a good time getting to know the characters and experiencing TJ Klune's trademark humor. In Heat Wave, Nick Bell is training to be an Extraordinary, which he actually gets to be now! His relationship with Seth is adorable, his friendship with Jazz and Gibby is fantastic, and we got to learn more about the side characters in this one! I have to say, I wasn't 100% thrown off or surprised by what happened in Heat Wave, but it's the way TJ Klune told the story that got me. I also think that he took the criticism of the first book and tried so hard to fix his mistakes in books 2 and 3, which also fit well into the story. (side note here, I'm not someone who can forgive what he was criticized for, but is definitely clear he listened!) He's one of my auto-read/auto-buy authors at this point! I highly recommend this series.

𝘼𝙣 𝙚𝙭𝙥𝙡𝙤𝙨𝙞𝙫𝙚 𝙚𝙣𝙙𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙩𝙤 𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙀𝙭𝙩𝙧𝙖𝙤𝙧𝙙𝙞𝙣𝙖𝙧𝙞𝙚𝙨 𝙩𝙧𝙞𝙡𝙤𝙜𝙮!

I am not a big superhero fan, but I am a huge fan of TJ Klune so was so excited to read this series! Heat Wave is the third book in the trilogy and in this one, Nick & Seth finally get to team up to figure out if there’s a traitor on their team.

I have really enjoyed this series. Klune writes these stories with such care and his characters with such depth that he draws his readers in. It was nice to read Nick, Seth, Gibby, and Jazz grow up through these books. I’ve always been a big fan of the “Dad Squad” so was happy to see them back again!

If you’re looking for a superhero series that is full of humor and heart, I definitely recommend these books.

I received a copy of this book from Tor Teen and NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.