Under the Moon: A Catwoman Tale by Lauren Myracle, Isaac Goodhart (Illustrator)

Synopsis (via Goodreads): When fourteen-year-old Selina Kyle, aka the future Catwoman, becomes homeless, she must confront questions of who she is and who she will become.

She rejects human cruelty, but sometimes it seems as though brute force is the only way to "win." And if Selina is to survive on the streets, she must be tough. Can she find her humanity and reconcile toughness with her desire for community ... and love?

From Lauren Myracle, the New York Times best-selling author of books like ttfn and ttyl, comes the story of a teenage Catwoman, as she struggles to find her own identity while living on the streets of Gotham.

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I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. My thoughts and opinions are my own. Any quotes I use are from an unpublished copy and may not reflect the finished product.

I'm not familiar with Catwoman's origin story, so I'm not sure how this one compares, but Myracle's version was dark. Selina's mother dates abusive men, although date might not be the right word. They cycle through Selina's life, all of them assholes, until one stays longer than the rest. He might be worse than the others combined, yet Selina's mother defends him and doesn't do anything to protect her daughter.

I hate parents like this. If you want to let someone abuse you, that's horrible, but you should never let someone verbally or physically assault your child. Selina is only fourteen, but she was forced to grow up a long time ago. She had to in order to survive. Despite her living situation, she's not a different person at school. She has "friends" that we see for a page or two, but she was able to dismiss them without much thought. She barely communicated with them, and their roles were basically nonexistent.

I really dislike it when animal cruelty is used to further a character's story. They are completely innocent, and often used against their will for things they don't understand. Selina finds a cat, a cat she's probably not supposed to have since she keeps it a secret, but her newfound happiness is quickly discovered and removed. Her mother could have saved them both, but she allows her abuser to lock her daughter away and endanger the cat. Eventually, her mom lets her out of the closet, but only in time to watch her beloved friend die horribly. Why didn't her mom save the kitten first? It would have been a simple thing to do, and her daughter wasn't in immediate danger. She shouldn't have allowed either thing to happen, but she was shitty parent.

Then there's everything that happened with Bruce Wayne and Ojo. It was hard to remember Selina was fourteen based on what she was doing with her life, but then she would do something completely childish to remind me. Bruce offered his home to her, and she never even considered what that would mean for her future -- a place to stay, food, friendship. Instead, she's sleeping on the streets and "showering" in fancy stores (also stealing clothes to avoid the issue of doing laundry). She steals and lies to survive, but it could have been avoided.

Ojo was a random guy she met on the streets, but he promised to teach her how to parkour. Eventually, he confides in her and we meet Yang and Briar Rose. It all seemed to happen really fast, and there were too many variables that didn't make sense. When Selina didn't show up for school (we're talking weeks, maybe a month), her parents would have been notified, or the police called. That likely would have led to an investigation, if she was labeled a missing person, or someone discovered the abusive nature of her home. Selina wouldn't have been able to waltz back into her school without consequences, and Bruce wouldn't have been so nonchalant about her disappearance. His concern seemed to be genuine, and they were friends once, so his behavior felt uncharacteristic.

Everything that happened with Rosie (previously Briar Rose) was weird. How the author chose to leave things was also weird. Selina, someone that's been trusting her instincts from the start, knew there was something fishy, but chooses to ignore it because a nine-year-old knows how to make her own decisions. The "home" had fliers inviting lost children to stay... c'mon, that's unsettling. I doubt it's legal, safe, or anything other than shady.

Honestly, I'm feeling pretty blah about this one. I enjoyed Myracle's Shine a few years ago, which is why her name was familiar, and I've always been curious about Catwoman, but a lot of things rubbed me the wrong way. There was no resolution with her mother, the abusive Neanderthal, the school, Ojo or Yang, and her treatment of Bruce was cold. He only wanted to help her, and Rosie when he had the chance, but Selina wanted nothing and no one. That's her prerogative, I guess, but I don't feel like there were many positives to take away from this story.