Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

I was just looking at reviews of The Okay Witch on Goodreads, and I’m apparently in a tiny minority; most people seemed to enjoy this graphic novel. I thought it was a hot mess.

Okay, fine. It was decently enjoyable at the beginning and the cat was a definite highlight, but it started going downhill about the time that the mother dropped the “Oh, you’re a witch, but magic isn’t great, so don’t worry about it” bomb. (I had the same problem with Inkheart–telling a tween (teen? because I’m not actually sure how old Moth is) something life-changing and THEN telling her not to worry about and refusing to explain further is just stupid.) And when you were the queen of teenage rebellion yourself, expecting your daughter to just be cool with what you say (especially when you apparently have NO CLUE about what your daughter’s life is actually like) seems patently absurd. The history and backstory of the witches and New England was all jumbled–witches that worshiped Hecate, one of whom looks curiously ethnic, and a New England governor still celebrated for leading a witch hunt? (Spoiler alert: the “witches” driven out of New England towns were generally, you know, NOT witches, and nobody remembers Salem for making GOOD decisions in the latter 17th century.)

As for the PLOT…for 2/3 of the book we have a middle grade girl who’s suddenly found out she’s a witch and reading her mother’s diary because her mother’s being ridiculous about it, and then BAM. Suddenly the plot develops a weird legacy/vendetta/battle-between-opposing-supernatural-forces vibe, Grandma as a character is inconsistent all over the place, and it ends with a how-am-I-supposed-to-buy-any-of-that? declaration. Seriously–HOT MESS. The intended audience is unlikely to complain about much of this, but I was stuck between incredulity and irritation by the end of the book. If you want a culturally interesting graphic novel, folks, THERE ARE BETTER CHOICES OUT THERE.