howlinglibraries's Reviews (1.85k)

 Well, this was adorable and precious, and a very necessary story to be told! Frizzy follows Marlene, a young Dominican girl whose mother makes her get her hair straightened every week, but all Marlene wants is to wear her natural curls and be herself. It's an incredibly uplifting, family-oriented story of how much of an impact our family members' unkind and shallow commentary can have on our lives, as well as focusing on colorism, anti-Blackness, and the pain that comes with being told your natural appearance isn't "good enough", professional enough, etc.

The art is gorgeous, Marlene is such a lovable protagonist, and I really enjoyed her Tía Ruby, her best friend Camila, and even her mother (she has room to grow, but luckily we get to see that progress in the end!). I'm so happy that this book exists and highly recommend it to any young reader, but especially young readers who will be able to relate to Marlene's feelings about her hair and how society views it.

Thank you to the publisher for the review copy! All thoughts are honest and my own.

✨ Representation: Marlene and her family are Dominican 

 I grew up on Mary Downing Hahn's books and loved them as a kid, so I had to give this adaptation a try!

The artwork was nice and the storytelling is decent, but the thing that surprised me the most about this adaptation is how aged the dialogue feels! Wait Till Helen Comes is a book that released in the 80s originally, so I assumed the adaptation would be modernized a bit (as is the case with most graphic adaptations I've read of older kids' books), but that wasn't the case here.

I struggle to imagine the average kid today being able to connect to the characters or dialogue. It also felt like the spooky elements were tamed down to be more of a paranormal fantasy story, which is disappointing when you think about how few horror graphic novels there are for kids! I'd recommend this for kids who like ghost stories but are very easily frightened, but I wouldn't recommend it for the more committed horror-loving kids in your life. 

 I'm sad to say what a relief it was to finally finish this anthology, but it felt like it dragged on for years, and that has nothing to do with the page count.

While there were a few stories I really loved, absolute diamonds in the rough, I mostly strongly disliked this collection. I've read a lot of Ellen Datlow's edited anthologies over the years and I usually love them, so I'm not sure why this one didn't connect with me. I finally had to commit myself to a goal of reading at least one story per day just to finally finish it, and even allowed myself to DNF a few of the pieces (which I almost never do with short story collections!).

That said, I'd like to focus on the silver lining of the 5-star reads that I adored and highly recommend:

Unfortunately, only 5 stories out of 29 received 5 stars from me. While a few more were still very enjoyable (honorable mentions to Here Comes Your Man by Indrapramit Das, Crick Crack Rattle Tap by A.C. Wise, and The Smell of Waiting by Kaaron Warren), this means that 21 out of 29 stories ranged from slightly boring to entirely unlikeable for me. Given that I gave 3/4 of the collection 3 stars or less (and several stories only 1 star), I can't recommend this anthology as a whole or justify giving it a higher rating than 2 stars overall.

Thank you to the publisher for the review copy! All thoughts are honest and my own. 

 This was absolutely the queer, sweet, beautiful found family of witchy students I needed in my life, and I loved every page of this story. The characters are so lovable and the plot was interesting and suspenseful, all set in a magical world that I wanted so much more time in!

I loved the Younwity school setting, and most of all, I adored the familiars — especially Seymour, the nervous, kindly little cat that accompanies Abby, the protagonist. And then that ending, too?

Truly, everything about this graphic novel made my witchy little heart sing and I can't recommend it highly enough! ♥

✨ Representation: Goldie is Black and queer; Goldie's father is Black; Violet is queer (and Asian?); Enver uses they/them pronouns 

 This was such a sweet, cute little story (for the most part)! I really loved the witchy themes, especially Marigold's kitchen magic in her bakery. I wish that we'd gotten more focus on the various paranormal elements of the other characters, and less focus on Ray's job, because the parts about her job were honestly mostly a bit boring and felt like "too much" (not in the sense that it shouldn't have been included, but in the sense that there were too many separate threads within the career subplot and most of them weren't wrapped up in the end).

I loved the characters, and the development we got to see in several of them. Ray was a very lovable main character, though I thought some of her behavior was immature and maybe not addressed as thoroughly as I'd have liked for it to be. While Laurie's transgressions are pretty well handled, it felt like Ray's are swept under the rug, whether it's related to her emotional unavailability or her poor handling of situations at work.

I hate to throw in another "I loved this, BUT —" point, but the romance: I thought it was absolutely adorable and I sensed so much chemistry between Ray and Laurie in the beginning, but this story suffered from the classic case of these characters getting into a relationship too early into the story, which led to a lot of their conversations being repetitive. The conflict between them was fine (and I say this as someone who usually hates the infamous Romance Break-up Act™️), but I was kind of disappointed in the ending! I get why so many YA/NA authors go this route with endings to their romance books, but I'm a hopeless romantic and these two had SO much potential and cared so much for one another that the ending felt unrealistic and forced.

Overall, this graphic novel was mostly enjoyable, but I had a lot of caveats that pulled it down from the 5-star rating I originally had hoped to give it. Writing this out, I actually struggle with even giving it 4 stars, but the massive amount of love and joy it brought me in the first half makes it hard to go lower than that, too. Plus, the art is adorable.

Thank you to the publisher for the review copy! All thoughts are honest and my own.

✨ Representation: Ray, Laurie, Marigold, and multiple other side characters are BIPOC and/or queer; two side characters use they/them pronouns
 

 
I don't even know how to review this, because apparently the NetGalley eARC I got is only a sampler, even though I can't find anywhere that states this on NetGalley? I can only assume this based off of the fact that the GR listing says it's 304 pages, while my copy was barely over 100 pages and ended very abruptly. On one hand, I hesitate to rate it based on the fact that, by that logic, I only got to read about 33% of it; on the other hand, I strongly disliked the 100-ish pages I got to read of it and have no interest whatsoever in the finished product.

I appreciate the immensely diverse character cast, but disliked every character I met so far besides Marcia, and found the plot difficult to follow and extremely rushed. This isn't for me, but I'm sure it will better suit a lot of other readers.

✨ Representation: Tony is queer, BIPOC (I saw other reviewers say Afro-Latinx but did not see this for myself & cannot ensure it), and has asthma; Eli has a chronic illness and is trans (according to other reviews - again, haven't seen it for myself & cannot ensure it) 

 I decided to give this story one more issue, but I disliked this one even more than the first issue. I was still lost as to how we got here, bored by the characters and dialogue, and nothing in me feels invested enough in this premise to continue on with another issue at this time.
 

 I wanted to love this because I love Alice in Wonderland retellings, especially when they have a horror twist! Unfortunately, though, this was one of those cases where being dumped into the middle of the story had a negative impact: it felt strongly to me that there should have been more build-up to the scenes in this issue, or even flashbacks to explain how we got here a bit better. Perhaps I wasn't patient enough, but I found myself bored and a little lost, so that didn't help matters any.
 

 This was so incredibly gorgeous, and eerie, and breathtaking. I am endlessly in love with stories depicting relationships between the living and the dead, and the most unique shapes those bonds can take. The artwork is beautiful and detailed, with the character design for the nameless entity being my favorite part of all. The Me You Love in the Dark is one of those graphic novels I'll absolutely be picking up a physical copy to keep on my shelf and will be recommending to anyone who enjoys horror, because this captivated me fully.