Halloween Reads: Through the Woods by Emily Carroll

Through the Woods by Emily Carroll

The Stats:

My rating: * * * -or– "liked it"

Published: July 2014

Hardcover, 208 pages

The Review:

I've been hearing a lot about this graphic novel from people recommending good holiday reads (Halloween season is the only season!). I haven't spend much time reading graphic novels (a more accurate statement would be "Garfield" is the closest thing to a graphic novel that I've read). So take that into consideration with my three star rating; I'm not comparing it at all to other graphic novels.

What I liked: The illustration style is bold. Vibrant colors, lots of contrast of black and white, and thick strokes. I like this style and overall no problem with the illustration or format! I found it easy to follow and thematically appropriate. 

Not-so-liked: I didn't love any of the actual stories, which is why I only gave it three stars. I'm used to reading full on text, and I felt the lack of words got in the way of actual suspense in most of the stories. There is one story about Janna that I really liked; the prose is especially poetic. But other than that I felt like the stories weren't scary enough, even with the pictures. The visual aspect should have made it more scary but, like I said, the lack of words lead to an overall lack of story development. Instead of suspense and mystery I felt like a lot of storytelling was just left out.