Please note that this post may contain spoilers for this book and that these opinions are my own.
Goodreads Synopsis In the early hours after Halloween of 1988, four 12-year-old newspaper delivery girls uncover the most important story of all time. Initial thoughts I had such high hopes going into this graphic novel. The art work is beautiful and I had heard some good things about it. Although I knew nothing about the plot and lets be honest that synopsis on Goodreads is severely lacking, I thought that it would be an interesting reading I thought that it was worth a shot. I was on a graphic novel high.
It revolves around four girls in the 1980's who do newspaper deliveries and are some of the first girls to actually do it. It starts on the morning after Halloween where Erin, our main character, is harassed by a couple of guys who are still very clearly in the Halloween mood. Erin is in luck when she is saved by the three soon to be side characters Mac, Tiff and KJ. Erin quickly joins the group to finish up the round and that's when it all begins. Honestly, I can't explain much more than this because I became very confused. I finished the first volume and felt so baffled about what had happened and what was happening. At one point they found a futuristic machine in the basement, then there was two teenagers from the future(?), there was someone else hunting the teens and honestly, I have no idea who any of them where and I couldn't figure out which ones were the good guys or the bad guys. I felt like the first volume should have set up the characters but there was barely any development apart from finding out Erin had a little sister and Mac had a step mum who met her dad in alcoholics anonymous.
I thought I would try volume 2, in hopes that my unanswered questions were going to be answered.
I was completely and utterly wrong.
While I can admit the second volume was better than the first, I felt even more confused and I now have even more questions. I still don’t know what the plot really is of this novel. I don’t know if it’s me and I’m missing something but I was just don’t know what’s going on.
At the end of volume one the girls have somehow time travelled to the future, KJ is not with them for some random reason, and have luckily managed to land right in the path of Future Erin. Erin is now in her forties and seems to just somewhat accept the fact that this girl in front of her is her in the past. Then to add more confusion on top of a very big pile, another Erin appears. I have no idea where from but she’s there and she’s somehow managed to open a tear which is letting monsters into this current time.
Are you still with me? I’m completely lost and cannot tell if any of this makes any sense at all. There is talks of different folds and I presume they mean folds in time? I don’t feel like that was explained very well or if it was I completely misread it. Also, the people tracking the girls talk in a weird English which I cannot make sense of and it just frustrated me every time they spoke.
I felt sorry for one character in this volume and that was Mac, who found out that she will eventually die of leukaemia. However, that was the only connection I felt with any of the characters. Final Thoughts I wanted to like this series, I really wanted to but I just can’t continue on with it. I haven’t got time to just carry on reading something I don’t enjoy when I can be reading other books or graphic novels. I had so many questions from volume one going into volume two which were not answered and I just ended up with more once I stopped reading.
I don’t know if it’s something I’m missing or I’ve glazed over but I really cannot figure out what the hell is going on. I might try and carry on when I have some time, but at this moment in time I can say I will not be reading volume three.
Rating for both volumes: 2/5 stars (this is simply because visually it is really beautiful, the storyline just lets it down).