iBoy ~ Kevin Brooks

iBoy is a new addition to the reluctant superhero pantheon. Tommy's brain has been fused with an iPhone that was thrown out of a high-rise apartment and hit him in the head. He discovers he has all the information gathering and manipulation capabilities of a cell phone. He also has a special bond with all electronics that allows him to generate force fields and direct currents.

But he's still just a kid.

He has a crush on a girl in his building. She is raped brutally by a gang who is trying to teach her brother respect. This is why an iPhone is thrown out of the building at Tommy.

When he wakes up in the hospital weeks later, he learns what has happened and begins to take revenge on the low-lifes who have hurt Lucy. Only it's not Tommy when he is taking revenge; it's iBoy. And Lucy falls in love with iBoy, her avenger and hero.

This is a brutally violent book. But then the world it describes is brutally violent and all too real. Tommy's London slum apartment complex is dominated by gang warfare and organized crime. It's a world of drug addiction, teen prostitution and ego run rampant. Like all superheroes, you wish iBoy could step in to stop the all the needless horror. But even iBoy realizes that it's never enough. Every action has consequences, many not even logical, most impossible to predict. And even acts of heroism can spiral out of control.