Saturday Smalls — May 25th, 2019

This week’s mini review round-up includes the following:

1. adult mystery graphic novel
2. adult horror graphic novel
3. YA mystery graphic novel
4. adult romance novel

TITLE: My Heroes Have Always Been Junkies
AUTHOR: Ed Brubaker
GENRE: Mystery
AGE RANGE: Adult

SYNOPSIS:
Teenage Ellie has always had romantic ideas about drug addicts, those tragic artistic souls drawn to needles and pills have been an obsession since the death of her junkie mother ten years ago. But when Ellie lands in an upscale rehab clinic where nothing is what it appears to be… she’ll find another more dangerous romance, and find out how easily drugs and murder go hand-in-hand.

Meh.

I don’t really know what I expected from this, but what I got was a cross between a mystery and a very bland slice-of-life story about two teens/young adults who run away from rehab and try to make it on their own. There’s a twist ending that I didn’t really see coming, but at the same time, I just couldn’t attach to the story enough to be invested or surprised. I also really was not a fan of the art style.

TITLE: Winnebago Graveyard
AUTHOR: Steve Niles
GENRE: Horror
AGE RANGE: Adult

SYNOPSIS:
An American family’s vacation turns into a nightmare when they stop in a small California town. Before they know what’s happening, they’ve become the targets of the town’s citizens who just happen to be Satanists. What comes next is a wild ride of terror and survival.

When I grabbed this from the library, I had seen the 2.44 average rating it had on Goodreads at the time, but I thought, “It can’t be that bad, right? The premise sounds so interesting!” Lol, joke’s on me — I flipped open the first page and realized, yeah, it’s that bad. I forced myself to trudge through to the end, to see if it ever improved enough to warrant even one more star in my review, but the art is god-awful hideous (in many panels, it looks like someone took candid photos of awkward faces people pull while speaking and then traced over those digital) and the plot is boring and difficult to follow because it’s so poorly fleshed out. Yikes!

TITLE: Goldie Vance, Vol. 1
AUTHOR: Hope Larson
GENRE: Mystery
AGE RANGE: YA

SYNOPSIS:
Sixteen-year-old Marigold “Goldie” Vance has an insatiable curiosity. She lives at a Florida resort with her dad, who manages the place, and it’s her dream to one day be the hotel’s in-house detective. When Walter, the current detective, encounters a case he can’t crack, together they utilize her smarts, skills, and connections to solve the mystery…even if it means getting into a drag race, solving puzzles, or chasing a helicopter to do it!

This was so gorgeous and sweet! I’ll be honest, I’m not big on kid or teen detective plotlines, so the story was a little out of my usual tastes, but the art was so pretty and the characters were so lovable, I still enjoyed it a lot and would definitely continue the series. I especially dug how fantastically diverse the character cast was, and that little beginning of a romance at the end was adorable! ♥

TITLE: New Orleans Rush
AUTHOR: Kelly Siskind
GENRE: Romance
AGE RANGE: Adult

SYNOPSIS:
Beatrice Baker may be a struggling artist, but she believes all hardships have silver linings…until she follows her boyfriend to New Orleans and finds him with another woman. Instead of turning those lemons into lemonade, she drinks lemon drop martinis and keys the wrong man’s car.

Now she works for Huxley Marlow of the Marvelous Marlow Boys, getting shoved in boxes as an on-stage magician’s assistant. A cool job for some, but Bea’s been coerced into the role to cover her debt. She also maybe fantasizes about her boss’s adept hands and what else they can do.

DNF @ 20%

I’ve been trying to read this for almost two months, when the typical romance novel of this length would only take me a day or two, once I get into it. That’s the problem, though, or one of many: I just can’t get into it. No matter how intriguing the plot sounded, nothing about these characters or their situations has been able to drag me into the storyline.

On top of that, I just don’t like Bea at all — maybe she improves later on, but at this point, she’s entitled and rude. The conflict between her and Huxley literally begins with her getting so smashed that she keys swear words into his car (when he has no money at all to fix it, and his car is sentimentally valuable to him), and then acting offended at the thought of having to work for him to pay it off, when he could easily and justifiably report her to the police and be done with it. Even at this point, while I’m seeing tiny moments of progress in her development, she’s still acting bratty and is taking advantage of Huxley’s mercy, and it’s just… gross.

If I could power through enough of this book to justify giving it a star rating, it’d probably be 1 or 2 stars. As it is, I’m cutting myself enough slack to drop this one now.

Thank you so much to the publisher for providing me with this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

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