★★★★★ 3
Cute story about friendship with a fantastical twist.
Format: Kindle, Format: Kindle
Amazon has been recommending me this book for quite some time now, and since I read a lot of reviews saying that the premise was very interesting/ unusual, I decided to give it a shot. I bought the Kindle version.
#1 The artwork: I'm a huge fan of graphic novels, so the art on the cover caught my eye immediately. I liked the overall style, and color palette. However I feel like the interior art falls flat sometimes. No doubt that the artist knows her stuff, but I felt like sometimes she might not have had such a strong handle on the characters. The line thickness tended to vary from panel to panel on some pages, and some characters didn't always look like they belonged in the same universe.
#2: The story (spoilers): The concept for this was very interesting, and I enjoyed it for the most part, but there were some things about the story I thought were unnecessary. I don't think Prince Neptune needed to be a character at all. To me, his only real purpose was to make Danny into a less likable version of herself, and to end the book when he destroyed the school. The ending I also thought was a little weird. I had read reviews about it beforehand, but It still caught me completely off guard. I know the story is fantasy, obviously, but I think it could've been toned down just a smidge. I think if the plot focused more on the relationship between Danny, Madison, and even Danny's other friends, I would've given it five stars. I found myself asking a lot of questions about them in terms of who they were to Danny, and why it seemed like they all stopped hanging out for seemingly no reason. A point was made that Danny had a different schedule than them, but I didn't even see her make an effort to preserve her relationships despite this.
One things I really want to praise the book on however, is the humor. There was a lot of subtle jokes for older readers that I chuckled at, that would probably fly over a kid's head.
For those who are wondering, there's no swearing/ inappropriate words, but some bullying/ teasing/ crying is depicted. There is also fantasy "violence", but it's nothing worse than what you'd see in a Saturday morning cartoon on Disney channel.
#3 Final Thoughts: Overall, I would recommend this book if you have young kids interested in this kind of thing. I'm not the target demographic for this, so I'm a bit more critical, however if someone had put this in the hands of 9 year old me, I would've absolutely loved it to bits.
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Reviewed in the United States on September 10, 2020
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