This was such a weird one. I understand that this is marketed as horror, and it certainly has some horrific elements, but it never <i>felt</i> like a horror novel. It wasn't strictly a romance, either. It felt like a contemporary novel with some paranormal horror thrown in, honestly. 

Rory returns to her home town when her sister Scarlett asks her to keep her company just before her baby is born, and she's barely there for a short time before she's attacked and bitten by a werewolf. I have to give Rachel Harrison some credit with the werewolf body horror - it's about the ONLY thing horrifying about this entire story. The attack, the description of gore and Rory's bodily changes were well done, and had me cringing the every time it was described.

The rest of the novel focuses on Rory trying to figure out her relationships and her life alongside freaking out about being a werewolf. Having re-connected with her old high school friend Ian (who was in love with her since they were kids), she's juggling her sibling relationship, her traumatic past that her mother's visit brings up, and a new romance with Ian. I actually liked a bit of the overall relationship struggles that Rory kept going through. 

However.

How-fucking-ever.

Rory was incredibly annoying. Holy shit, was she annoying. 

She was so Cool and everyone had to know it. Everyone had to constantly say it. She's COOL, y'all. She's funny and witty and sexy and everyone loves her and SHE'S SOOOO COOL. She goes to cool parties in NYC and has one night stands and never connects to any man and she always has fun times and she always has quirky zingers for every conversation. Even her sister Scarlett was a Cool Girl, just with a Kat Von D coat of paint. Their best friend was the bestest, most intense homemaker ever. The romantic lead Ian was a nerdy music kid turned hot dude - and did I mention he's tall? He's soooo big and tall. He's so tall that when he's sitting down on a chair, Rory barely reaches his face. SO BIG AND TALL!!

I would have enjoyed this so much more had the character work been done better. The <i>relationships</i> were done really well, but the characters felt like they were fanfic wish fulfillment come to life. I wrote self-insert girls like Rory when I wrote NSYNC fanfic as a teen. It was just so jarring to have a really compelling relationship-driven paranormal story be dragged down by these caricatures. 

What a weird, weird experience this was.

Sometimes all you want out of a comic is a cool as fuck story and Once & Future delivered in spades. 

This isn't a retelling of the Arthurian myths so much as a love letter to them. Bridgette, a retired monster hunter, pulls her grandson along for a ride as zombified Arthurian myths come to life - all because some people in the modern world are trying their best to recreate the myths to save England. It's fun, it's fast paced, and though sometimes a bit too exposition heavy, I was just super into it all. 

The art is absolutely stellar. Dan Mora goes all in on character design, and his style is clean but still kinetic and just plain easy and fun to look at as the story moves along. His design for Bridgette is so badass. The color work is lovely as well, using muted tones but still saturated enough to keep things interesting.

Gosh, this was just plain FUN. 

Cheeky and charming, Huda F are You? details the all too familiar teenage struggle of trying to figure out who the F you are. Huda Fahmy's teenage struggles have an extra intersectional layer of figuring herself out as a person and as a Muslim, and her sense of humor and charm shines through in her writing. 

The art itself is very simple, very much like a Sunday newspaper comic, but I found that worked really well for the lightness of the story. It also made a few more serious scenes have a bit more of an impact. 

This is a perfect graphic novel for younger teens either exploring their identity, and/or learning about other cultures/people/etc. 

Content warning for Islamophobia.

DNF @ 17%. As much as I would love to try to get into this more, at this point I'm mostly bored and put off by the writing. It's underwritten and overwritten at the same time, giving me tons of world building but not in a way that seems to flow easily. The world building happens in fits and starts, dumping here and there and leaving me off kilter. 

I started The Stone Sky recently and that just hammered home how the world building in this book just isn't working for me. 

This is an incredibly charming read, following the eight plus year old Maud in a few short stories as she comes up with murderous fixes to problems she's facing. Maud is ornery and grumpy and murderous and I LOVED HER. 

 Wow, so. I haven't consumed anything Buffy in years, and I thought it would be neat to dip my toe back into the world with a fun What If type of story. This was probably not the best place to start. 

The idea itself is fun - Buffy is 50 years old, still alive and kicking in a climate-ravaged future where vampires are in the open, staking them is illegal, and most of her friends are dead. Suddenly, a young girl shows up claiming to be a new Slayer, and the story kicks off. 

Four issues was nowhere near enough for this story to make much sense. Everything about the main supposed plot rushed by so quickly that I still have no ideal idea why or how any of it was supposed to make sense. The only thing that this possibly had going for it was to play on Buffy fan nostalgia, but even that felt empty and off. 

This wasn't entirely terrible, and I did enjoy some moments that revealed what happened to the various Scoobies. I even teared up a bit toward the end. The art was neat, though kind of hard to follow at times - especially in the big fight scenes. Too much going on, not enough clarity. Outside of the fight scenes, the art was pretty good. 

So, probably not the best thing to check out after years of not consuming a Buffy story, but not entirely terrible, either. The overall story was a good idea, but the execution was sorely lacking. 

The pacing felt so breakneck in this volume, but I had no idea this was only two volumes! Basically, we see their relationship through to the end, with all the bumps in the road. Very cute, very cozy, and I enjoyed my time with this couple.