Marvel's Black Widow: Forever Red

I suppose if you know nothing about Natasha Romanoff you might be ok with this. I'm barely a quarter of the way thru and I have to stop. This thing is awful. Stohl clearly didn't give a damn about canon and simply did whatever she wanted.1. Natasha doesn't hate children, nor is she awkward around them. We've had dozens of examples of this in the comics. Literally DOZENS.2. There was only one Ivan in her life, Ivan Petrovich. HE was her father figure. HE was well established from some of her earliest appearances. HE was the one who caught her as she was thrown from a burning building as a BABY and raised her until she went into the Red Room. The OTHER male in her Red Room years was Taras Romanov, who was pretty awful to her and died when Wolverine killed him. An act that ended up prompting her to run away from the Red Room when she was 12.3. She has no birthday. it's not redacted. She doesn't know it. That whole being tossed out of a burning building as a baby sort of meant there wasn't time to bring up such things.4. Natasha Romanoff, is a Level 10 clearance, per canon. In fact, she is the only other level 10 clearance per canon aside from Nick Fury, and, potentially, Maria Hill (Tho Hill is left vague while she is knocked out and natasha takes over.)5. Natasha was an INFANT when she was rescued by Ivan P. How could she have memories of being rescued?6. She left the Red Room at 12... she didn't grow up there entirely. The KGB didn't manage to bring her back in again until her 20s (28 is specifically) when they pulled her into the Widow program (which was NOT the Red Room) when she agreed to go back in exchange for help saving Ivan Petrovich's life.6. At one point with a sniper figured to be 400 yards away (FOUR FREAKING FOOTBALL FIELDS), Natasha shoots in the general direction of said sniper first with a machine gun then with a pistol. 400 yards folks. What kind of super spy would even bother? Not to mention Natasha would never risk the innocent lives with the bullets raining down on the people in the streets. Your average manly movie would have told you this. I guess she doesn't watch movies any more than she reads up on the canon for the character she is writing.The YA romance is AWFUL. Ava has no real personality past er teen angst, neither does Alex. But boy are they madly in love. In the 8th grade.If you want a good Black Widow novel, this isn't it. Stohl completely ignores canon to do whatever she wants. I got this for free thru Marvel and I want the couple hours of my life back I've spent reading this.

Since Marvel/Disney is basically taking over the known universe, they suddenly realized a gaping hole in their money-getting plans; they have most media forms covered except good ol' fashioned book reading. Problem solved! Make a Marvel YA book series that can explore some of the Avengers characters stories. I read the Iron Man Gauntlet and found it meh-ish, a fun story that did little to add to the character. This book was better written, IMO, and did a lot to add to Natasha Romanoff's background, motivations, and internal struggles. I appreciated her interactions with Ava, basically herself, and how she explored that.Likes: The insight it gave me to Black Widow, secondary character even though she was. And she had some awesome kick-butt moments. By far my favorite moments were with Coulson (please make a book series about him, Marvel; I know he has a show, kind of, but it's not really about him that much anymore and we never get his back story, really) and Tony Stark. I could have read about Tony and Black Widow all day. The writing was well done, and I really liked some of the prose. I thought I'd mostly be annoyed by Ava, and she was a bit irritating and ungrateful at times, but I warmed up to her a bit. The other main character Alex was fun to read about, until he wasn't. Which brings me toDislikes: (kind of a spoiler? A tiny one?)Mild spoiler here, although the beginning of each chapter does mention a line of duty death (LODD) multiple times so in my defense it's not that big of a deal. But really all I want to say without giving it away is that it was stupid and it made no sense and it basically ruined the book for me. Otherwise, I would have been pleasantly entertained instead of massively annoyed. But the character that died took the book from an interesting character study to a YA trope of killing a character without any reason except to make the reader sad. It didn't do anything to further the plot or the characters.This has little to do with the book, but it was also poorly edited; I just found a few spelling mistakes and misplaced quotation marks, that kind of thing. This book was not self-published, I have standards you know.

I bought the Book because I like the Black Widow. I have read comics since I was a kid, and Marvel has always been my go to company. While BW was never one of my favorites, I did always enjoy the character.In this book, she is a secondary character behind two older teens named Alex and Ava. The book goes back and forth between each of the three as each chapter is told from one of their perspectives. The story is about Natasha trying to kill somebody from her past, and of course the main characters get intertwined as well.While it was off the Black Widow book was not mainly about Black Widow, it honestly wasn't a big deal early on. It still felt like a good spy story with shield and Avengers tie ins. It started to fall apart about half way through, when the "young adult" part of the book kicked in. We get romance, which I usually enjoy, and we get some really off backstory on Natasha that tries to humanize that character. Now I know this book giant considered cannon, or part of,the actual marvel universe, but it still seemed very out of place with this character. Without going into spoilers, I can't really explain why I didn't like it. But it just felt cheesy and seemed almost like they only did it to tie the 3 characters together.The book wasn't bad, and I really enjoyed the first half of it. I loved every interaction Coulson had, and the cameo by a certain Avenger early on. But finishing the book was difficult. It was on sale for a dollar, I easily got that out of it But I have no interest in reading the next book.

I did really want to like this book, but it a bit too slow for me. I like the characters, this is more the marvel comic book version of the Black Widow as opposed to the warmer more flirtatious version played by Scarlet in the movies (however I am sure she would turn on the charm is needed). This is the part of the book I like, but my main problem with the book is it is too slow. There is almost noting in the book you will not see coming a few chapters before. The book is written from 3 perspectives, Natasha's, Ave's, and Alex's. The are also a few guest stars and honorable mentions. The thing that really does not work for me is, transcripts of the deposition at the end/beginning of every chapter. I can see this working in a movie setting as a cut scene, but it did not work for me in the book format, also in some cases I though it game too much away. To me this is origin story.The Red Room, now defunct, was where a young girl Natasha Romanoff was trained/tortured into the super spy and now Averger the Black Widow. Still bearing scars and trauma, The Widow is sent to "take care of" her over time mentor and head of the Red Room program, Ivan the Strange. However Ivan is not done and still has a few cards to including a long term plan for Natasha and the world. For someone who has always know hardship and betrayal, this give Widow something she has not had in a long time. Hope.There are parts of this book that I though were very good, but it is just too slow for me and like I said a bit obvious what is going to happen. It is a bit overly ambitious in the plot as well it reminds me of the 80s villains for spies.

Who doesn't love Black Widow? This story was great!

I loved this book I found it a bit confusing for a start but it’s easy to understand after the first few chapters. It’s written very well and I would definitely recommend to anyone who loves black widow in the comics and in the movies. Overall a great read.

Brilliant

As a massive black widow fan, I loved it. It did a great job of exploring both Natasha's past and her emotions. I really hope there's a sequel.