WardenRed reviewed Squad by Maggie Tokuda-Hall
None
4 stars
Being a teenager sucks. Being a woman isn’t fair. And I’m sorry that together it can be so, so stressful.
So this graphic novel is basically Mean Girls, but with werewolves and murder. Which sounds really cool as a concept, but unfortunately, I found the overall execution sort of lacking. I did like a good number of things about the book, such as how the story was constructed with the gradual build-up of suspense to every reveal, and—most notably—the art. The art was really nice to look at and conveyed all the right emotions. Also, the werewolf mythos here definitely has some cool touches.
The characters were rather hard to connect to, though. I would have appreciated some more focus on all the individual relationships in the titular squad, as well as some focus on what each of the girls were getting out of following Arianna that wasn’t connected directly …
Being a teenager sucks. Being a woman isn’t fair. And I’m sorry that together it can be so, so stressful.
So this graphic novel is basically Mean Girls, but with werewolves and murder. Which sounds really cool as a concept, but unfortunately, I found the overall execution sort of lacking. I did like a good number of things about the book, such as how the story was constructed with the gradual build-up of suspense to every reveal, and—most notably—the art. The art was really nice to look at and conveyed all the right emotions. Also, the werewolf mythos here definitely has some cool touches.
The characters were rather hard to connect to, though. I would have appreciated some more focus on all the individual relationships in the titular squad, as well as some focus on what each of the girls were getting out of following Arianna that wasn’t connected directly to the whole werewolf thing. There were some passing mentions of her getting Becca a boyfriend for prom and such, but that was more telling than showing.
The story includes some themes and messages that are really important, but it kind of tries to do too much at the same time. There are all those instances of racism, and while I felt like those were meant to give the reader a bit of a pause every time, the way they get shrugged off every time by the very victims of those microaggressions might send the wrong message to someone who isn’t already very consciously aware of the damage this kind of thing does. I feel like maybe the author was trying to be subtle and overplayed the angle too much. There’s also that entire tangle of peer pressure, wanting to belong, female rage, toxic masculinity, how the more privileged of the oppressed can be complicit in the oppression even when they claim to be fighting it, perhaps even allegories for eating disorders. And each of these threads definitely deserved more attention than it got.
All in all, I feel like this was supposed to be a poignant coming of age story wrapped into a campy werewolf tale, but the fun gory campiness overshadowed all that substance.
