Catwoman Soulstealer Review

Hi 👋🏽 This review is going to have spoilers in it. I’m going to be going into details about what I loved about this book, naming names and specifying scenes. This novel is a slow sneaky crawl that explodes into a sprint as it races to the end of the last chapter. Themes of casual badass girl power, overcoming trauma, and exploring love in all its forms are sprinkled deliciously throughout all 358 pages of this beautiful novel and I can’t wait to gush about it with you. Let’s get into it.

The Strong Female Main Character

Ight so boom 👏🏽 Selina Kyle is pretty much orphaned. Abandoned by her father and escapes from her very violent addict mother, Selina raises her sister, Maggie, by herself. Maggie has been diagnosed with incurable cystic fibrosis at and early age. To make Maggie’s life as painless as possible Selina raises money to pay for Maggie’s treatment out of pocket by winning fights in an underground, gang organized illegal fighting ring. Selina answers to two gangs who run Gotham’s underworld for several years before dirty cops arrest her on false charges. That’s when Talia al Ghul, the co-leader of the League of Assassins, picks her up. Selina trades her life for Maggie’s, training and working for the League in exchange for Maggie’s safe placement into a rich home where she is eventually adopted.

Selina Kyle has nothing but Maggie. She has no parents, no academic future, no career ahead of her, only her responsibility to her sister. The responsibility to make sure that Maggie is safe and happy and never has to worry about the things Selina has to. Nothing else matters. Which means that when Maggie is safe, Selina has nothing left to lose, so she goes wild. Selina returns to Gotham City, assumes new identities, Holly Vanderhees and Catwoman and gets busy exploring every option, overturns every stone, makes any and all allies to get to what she needs. This is what makes Selina Kyle Catwoman. She doesn’t care too much about rich or poor, the labels of good or evil, or even her own health most of the time. Everything she does is in the name of family. With very little holding her back, she is able to do anything and risk very high stakes for the hell of it. She is always three steps ahead of everyone with back up plans labeled A-Z ready at any given moment. She uses what she does have, training, intelligence, and will, to protect her own. Catwoman being the craftiest person in the room is a byproduct of her love for her family, those by blood and those she earned along the way. She is stronger than what she has been through. She’s ready to take on whatever life throws at her next, and if not, she improvises. Selina Kyles Catwoman is a hero (?) that makes up her own rules while still maintaining her humanity. And in the end, everything she does, good or bad, is worth it. Because it has to be.

The Gays 🏳️‍🌈

The love between Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn is * chefs kiss * there is definitely no annoying queerbaiting in this novel, though there is a moment where we’re not sure of Selina’s sexuality and her conversation with Ivy gets a bit too flirty (nudge nudge wink wink) but that’s about it.

Ivy is very clear about her feelings with Harley and expresses it in many ways with her. Their love is playful and forgiving and warm. It is very much their love and they are the most important people in each other’s lives. However, Harley still has some major romantic hang-ups that are mostly understandable. This novel is very much about family and before Selina came by, Ivy and Harley were very much a family of two. While their romantic relationship was not defined, they are still very close and vulnerable with each other. It’s one of those weird relationships where you know the other one needs to heal so you need to be patient but you also can’t ignore yourself. Ivy and Harley are very communicative about their boundaries and while they have their emotional ups and downs, I think they’ll be alright. As much as this novel is about family, it’s also about healing.

Under the Mask

This romance is an incredibly agreeable slow burn between Catwoman and Batwing. It’s essentially the romance that Batman and Catwoman couldn’t have before, or could, depending on which DC medium and universe you’re in. Catwoman essentially knows everything. She knows Batwing and his secret identity Luke Fox, she knows where he lives, and she knows his past. She also knows Batman is away on a secret mission so the stakes are high, so she teases him mercilessly both as Catwoman and as her alter ego, Holly Vanderhees. At the height of their romantic tension, Luke Fox seeks affection from both Holly and Catwoman, maybe because he’s figured it out, maybe because he really needs to be loved. I loved the intimate portrayal of this budding relationship. They fall in love in stolen moments they are lucky enough to demand, reaching for each other when they are very much not supposed to.

I also appreciated this intimacy because of the race aspect of the novel. Luke Fox is a brown-skinned young man living in Gotham high society. While his character was not subjected to trauma porn, thank god, he himself noted that some Gotham City citizens are taken aback by the color of his skin. In this romance, Luke wasn’t hyper-sexualized or fetishized, he was truly judged by his character. Luke Fox is a grown man currently in pain due to past trauma and weighed down by the responsibility of being Batwing. He may even be considered to be Batman’s successor in the future. Luke is a man who really just wants to let his guard down and love this woman who so obviously cares for him. He wants to return the favor and protect her in the same way she has protected him. He wants to even the playing field in the most caring way possible.

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