V is for Villain

I've read a few too many superhero novels in the past couple of months for this to be anything more than middling for me. The pacing was too condensed for the story it was trying to tell, and the characters are never really explored in enough depth to make me actually care much about them. It feels like it's trying to be V.E. Schwab's “Vicious” for a younger set, but the petty teenage dramas take precedence over the government/global thriller without giving much insight into the protagonist or the antagonists. It's a decent story, but it would probably have been better as a two or three-part series, because as it is, it gives short shrift to both the internal and external drama.