ARC Review – Mooncakes

From Goodreads:

A story of love and demons, family and witchcraft.

Nova Huang knows more about magic than your average teen witch. She works at her grandmothers’ bookshop, where she helps them loan out spell books and investigate any supernatural occurrences in their New England town.

One fateful night, she follows reports of a white wolf into the woods, and she comes across the unexpected: her childhood crush, Tam Lang, battling a horse demon in the woods. As a werewolf, Tam has been wandering from place to place for years, unable to call any town home.

Pursued by dark forces eager to claim the magic of wolves and out of options, Tam turns to Nova for help. Their latent feelings are rekindled against the backdrop of witchcraft, untested magic, occult rituals, and family ties both new and old in this enchanting tale of self-discovery.

This graphic novel is just fantastic. It is fantastically diverse with both MC’s being Chinese-American, Tam is non-binary with clear use of they/them pronouns, Nova is hard of hearing with her hearing aids being referred to many times (including doing some kick ass magic with them), and she lives with her grandmas who are in a relationship with each other. The diversity is effortlessly clear and natural which makes it beautiful. It just exists on the page without discussion or explanation.

All of this is packaged up in a fantastic daemon fighting, witchy tale with werewolves, science loving (yet accepting of the withciness) friends, sweet reuniting romance, family focus and daemon fighting!

The artwork is also GORGEOUS! It suits the storyline so much with a lovely whimsy to it. It just draws out beautiful subtle moments of the story with little details in the background (look out for the cats they are fantastic). Overall this is just a fantastic graphic novel and I can’t wait to get a copy and re-read it in full colour.