SoapZone Community Message Board

The Umbrella Academy: Apocalypse Suite by Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá - Graphic novels really aren't my thing. Up till last month, I'd read exactly one: the critically acclaimed Maus. I find it slightly annoying to have to study the pictures and figure out which way the panels are going in order to keep track of the story. But I really enjoyed the series TUA and thought it'd be interesting to check out the source material. It was...OK. I really liked the animation, and it was fun seeing how much the series differs from the book (spoiler alert: a LOT). But it was a bit hard for me to follow at times, and much like the show, some of the plot elements seem to be weird just for the sake of weirdness. I still have a little trouble believing that the guy who wrote the TUA graphic novel(s) is the same guy who sings lead for My Chemical Romance. I'm going to skip rating this one just because I'm generally not a fan of graphic novels and don't feel qualified to rate one.

The Old Place by Bobby Finger - I don't have to tell you what this one is about <g>. It took me a bit to get into the book, mainly because I thought Mary Alice was less "sassy Southern belle" and more "crusty old beyotch". I never really did warm up to her and didn't think the ending she got was entirely earned but overall I enjoyed the book. B+

What Have You Done? by Shari Lapena - This is the third (fourth?) book I've read by SL and frankly, they're starting to get a bit formulaic, mainly in how everyone starts off seemingly decent and then is slowly revealed to be a little less decent person. In this book, a seemingly idyllic small town in Vermont is rocked by the death of the most popular girl in high school. Her body is found in a farmer's field and speculation runs rampant as to who killed her. Suspects are plentiful (and yet I *still* guessed wrong) and again, nobody is quite who they seem. On a side note, I'm noticing lately that the books I read that are set in small towns follow one of two tropes: either it's a small town with nothing to do, full of people desperate to get out and everyone has a dark secret or it's a small town filled with magical (sometimes literally) residents who all come together to love and support one another and pitch in to put on the perfect play or festival or book club or whatever...and everybody has a secret <g>. I feel that IRL, small towns are neither traps nor paradise...anyways, I'll give What Have You Done? a B. I didn't much care for the inclusion of the dead girl's ghost as one of the many narrators, and I found it hard to believe so many people in town had a dark side.

The Midnight Feast by Lucy Foley - My favorite of my February reads. In (yet another) small town--this one in England--a luxury resort opens the weekend of the summer solstice, much to the displeasure of the locals. By the end of the weekend, the ancestral manor turned resort is in flames and a body is discovered at the base of the cliff nearby. The story is told in three different time periods: the present, the days after the body is found and roughly 20 years earlier. Complicating the unraveling of the murder mystery is a collective belief in "The Birds", mysterious figures who supposedly live in the woods and bring justice for those who have been wronged, especially when it involves harming the land. The tale is well told and well paced, the characters are interesting, and while, yes, everyone has a secret, those secrets are skillfully woven together to propel the story forward. If you like mysteries, if you like wealthy (bad) people getting their comeuppance and if you like old local legends, then this is a perfect read. Solid A, maybe even an A+.

I've also been reading a LOT of Umbrella Academy fanfiction, mostly on AO3 (partly because stories there are better written than those on fanfiction.net and partly because there's simply a lot more of them). I'm lucky in that my two favorite characters in TUA--Five and Klaus, though I generally love all the characters--are also the two favorite characters among the fandom and feature prominently in many stories.