Book Review - Sweeney Boo's Over My Dead Body
Over My Dead Body by Sweeney Boo
Published by: HarperAlley
Publication Date: August 30th, 2022
Format: Kindle, 240 Pages
Rating: ★★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)
At the Younwity Hidden Institute of Witchcraft everyone is abuzz with the beginning of the Samhain celebrations. Violet Rove is using the holiday to terrifying younger classmates with tales of ghosts, who are harmless compared to the rumored demon in the woods. As the legend goes, a hundred years ago Karla Younwity entered the untamed woods surrounding the institute and was never seen again. Two fellow students tried to stop her but they failed and her cries for help can still be heard to this day. The week before Samhain is particularly dangerous as the veil between worlds thins. If your last name is Younwity, you should stay far away from the woods. Violet's roommate, Abby, just happens to be a Younwity, a foundling taken in by the institute and therefore bearing it's name. Abby doesn't much like her roommate. She likes her few friends, her familiar Seymour, and sleep. Oh does she love sleep. She's a senior, which means that she has a mentee, Noreen. And she has to be the worst mentor there is, oversleeping with assembly starting in ten minutes for the first day of the Samhain celebrations. Noreen will have a field day with this as she is the far more responsible of the two. Abby grabs her best friend Goldie and is summoned to assembly by Ms. Wilson, the mute and menacing groundskeeper. Abby doesn't see Noreen anywhere and then the headmistress, Ms. Good, starts the assembly, not with the customary cheer, but with the news that a student missed roll call at curfew the night before and is yet to be found. The initial spellwork indicates that they entered the untamed woods. Of course Abby's worst fears are realized when Ms. Good names the missing student as Noreen Younwity. The students aren't to worry, the coven has everything in hand and the celebrations will go on as planned with classes suspended for the day. Abby is a wreck and Goldie's father, who teaches the history of witchcraft, invites the girls for some tea. But Abby is spiraling. What if the legend of Karla Younwity is real? Noreen's best friend and fellow fledgling student Enver agrees. This isn't like Noreen. Which means it's time to do a little digging in the library and see if there's a spell to locate Noreen. After they left the library Enver found something that could work. But they can't attempt the spell until the witching hour. Which means staying up past curfew for a second night in a row. They all view it as worth the risk. And they believe they have found a lead in the untamed woods near the old oak tree. But they are caught. Violet snitched on Abby. The headmistress won't listen to what they've discovered and as Abby becomes more and more obsessed she is convinced that the very people who are there to protect them have a secret worth sacrificing Noreen for. Abby will not let that happen. Even if she has to do it on her own.
Over My Dead Body is a graphic novel tailor made for those obsessed with The Worst Witch and Wednesday. In fact there's a weird synchronicity with Wednesday. I say synchronicity because there's no way a graphic novel released in August could have influenced a television show released in November of the same year, it's just a similar setting with an eerie coincidence regarding botany professors. Seriously eerie. Yet for my undying devotion to all things Tim Curry and The Worst Witch, the gorgeous autumnal settings and orange foliage that simply radiate color coupled with the Disneyesque style veers away from Mildred Hubble and straight into Hermione Granger territory. I can't get over the feeling that Sweeney Boo is a huge Harry Potter fan that is well aware of how problematic that author is and has created this world of inclusivity and diversity and pronouns as a way to still be a part of that world without being a part of that world, which I heartily applaud. But this means that this whole book basically reads as Harry Potter FanFic. Which, honestly, I felt cheapened the story. When Seymour, Abby's familiar, declaims "YOU'RE ALL GOING TO GET IN TROUBLE, EXPELLED, OR WORSE" any Harry Potter fan worth their salt will recognize an inversion of Hermione's line; "I hope you're pleased with yourselves. We could all have been killed - or worse, expelled." It was just too on the nose. It took me out of the story that was trying to be told and instead made me start comparing it to a story that had already been told. Because of its place in popular culture any tale set at a school for witchcraft will automatically be compared to Harry Potter. While this inverts so many the issues of that series, just as it inverted that line, it needed more of a distance. And it just kept creeping in closer. There's the Untamed Woods, a simulacrum of The Forbidden Forest, a groundskeeper that most of the student body is terrified of who is half Hagrid half Filch, research in the library, visits to the headmistress's office, and a trio who will do anything for a friend. I know you could argue that some of these are tropes and therefore not directly Harry Potter related, but in context, it's gender swapped Harry Potter. And the thing is, I don't know why I feel so let down by this. The art was beautiful, so wonderfully festive and fall, and the story was fine, but it somehow just wasn't enough to make it something special despite the fact that looking at each and every page I could feel the time and loved poured into this book. I think the highest compliment I can pay it is that for all the people, including whomever wrote the blurb, who are comparing it to Chilling Adventures of Sabrina are wrong. This is so much better. So SO much better. The proof is in the fact that I actually finished it, unlike the Netflix show. I don't even know when I gave up on it and I don't care to ever find out. Especially because of how the characters ended up on Riverdale. And don't get me started on the comics.
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