Note: I received a free ARC of Black Widow: Red Vengeance from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Black Widow: Red Vengeance is the second book in the Black Widow series Margaret Stohl started last year.
Now I absolutely loved the first book in the series. Even though I haven’t read much of the Marvel comics featuring Natasha Romanoff I was able to follow it very easily because the first book mainly just focused on the Natasha we see in the recent Avengers movies. I could literally picture Scarlett Johansson doing and saying what Margaret had written. I loved that. I have always thought Natasha deserved a more thorough focus and liked seeing the Natasha I was familiar. I also didn’t mind the new characters that were added.
This book though…
Red Vengeance rips all the characters I enjoyed apart. Natasha doesn’t behave like any version of Natasha I’ve seen before in regards to her interactions with the other characters and her internal monologue. Ava (the new character we were introduced to in the first book of the series) is a whiny little baby. Honestly, given what she’s been through she should be more mature than in the first book but she’s not. It would have been okay if she’d grown through the course of the book but she didn’t.
And then there were all of the references that took it from the MCU and more into actual comic book land. Either have it solely reference the film franchise or the comics, not both.
I just hope if the series continues that the characters stay more true to themselves or I will not be continuing.
