Welcome Back, Booklovers! I've been following Geneva Bowers on Instagram for a couple of years because I love her illustrations. Her art style is just so cute! And I previously read a board book she did the illustrations for Mermaid Kenzie: Protector of the Deeps, a book I can't stop recommending. So I had not read the original Hovergirls web comic but I was excited to check out this version of it in graphic novel form with updated artwork. I received an arc from Bloomsbury in exchange for an honest review.
Hovergirls follows two cousins Kim and Jalissa Vasquez who move to Los Aquaceros together to start a new life. Kim has dreams of becoming a model and fashion designer while Jalissa is just trying to keep things together. It's not long before they discover they have special powers when strange aquatic monsters start attacking the city every time it rains.
Hovergirls is a throwback to the magic girl stories with pretty powers and fashionable outfits. Kim is excited to live out her heroine dreams and plan her fabulous superhero look. While cold Jalissa is more concerned about getting to sit down and watch her soaps while trying to keep the two of them afloat. It's that bubbly sunshine character alongside the moody mean girl type we've seen in countless media. Kim is ever the romantic and get's starry eyed over a cute surfer who is strapped for cash and constantly asks her to give him a loan.
Where the art delivers the actually storyline of itself struggles a bit as readers get further in. Almost as if she wanted them to have magical powers but realized a villain was needed at the last minute. When it's the slice of life stuff with the girls working at the coffee shop and struggling to get by in a new city it shines. When it came time for the plot to develop further that's where things got a little muddied and became rushed and I wasn't quite convinced.
With a book like this I did wonder what the teen reception will be since so many thing referenced here were callbacks to the 00s. Would the running gag of crazy soap opera plots land with them as a joke today when we're no longer in the era of watching soap operas on tv during the summer because that's what's on daytime tv? Even when I was a teen we were moving away from those shows and some of the ones parodied here we ended up canceled. Which also made me think about how these graphic novels are categorized as more publishers mainly known for their prose books acquire them. Why are some of these marketed as YA simply because they have young characters? Even ones like Wash Day Diaries that have characters in their 20s dealing with very adult situations get labelled as YA. Why is there still a stigma against graphic novels and comics being aimed at adults?
While teens are able to read this one there's a huge level of adult nostalgia that makes this book work. Overall it is a cute story that makes me yearn for magic girl content. The ending is left open to be a continued series and I'm wondering what direction it can go in with a little more development.
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