Book Review: Moonstruck Volume 1 Magic To Brew by Grace Ellis and Shae Beagle

Moonstruck Is a Howling Good Time 

In the enchanted college town Blitheton all Julie wants to do is get to know her new boo Selena, sling lattes at the Black Cat Cafe with her BFF Chet, and get a gig ghostwriting for a shameless Sweet Valley High/Babysitters Club knock off series of books, “The Pleasant Mountain Sisters”. The catch? Julie is a werewolf, everything with Selena is so new, and some creep is on the loose jonesing to take away the powers of everyone who gets in his way. Including Chet! 

From the imagination of acclaimed Lumberjanes writer and creator Grace Ellis comes the new graphic novel Moonstruck. Moonstruck Volume 1: Magic To Brew is a funtastic character-driven urban fantasy adventure that needs to slide into your TBR like um yesterday. Inhabited by supernatural denizens, legendary creatures, and the unfazed non-magical humans who peacefully live among them Blitheton is a fantastical, lively world just begging to be explored! 

Moonstruck’s characters are the heart and soul of the book. An empowering all-ages comic, Moonstruck is a creatively designed and inclusive world that features many women of color -- Julie is distinctly brown-skinned, her girlfriend Serena is Black, and the supporting character Cass, a cafe-owning seer, is also Black -- and rejects heteronormative attitudes. 

The main character Julie is a sensitive, highly emotional young twenty-something yearning for meaningful connection. The prominence of Julie’s character is everything. The queer Latina barista has a soft roundness to her fuller-figured body that brings warmth and body-positivity to the page and sets her apart from many of the typical graphic novel heroines. Her relationship with Selena seesaws from giddy flirty fun, to Julie’s struggles with anxiety and self-doubt, to the inevitable bickering matches that flare up between the two very opinionated werewolves. If the clashes between the two in Moonstruck are anything to judge their ‘ship by, Julie and Selena are in for a wild ride. 

The supporting characters around Julie are also diverse and visually striking. There’s a cowardly lead guitar playing vampire on the outs with the punk rock band he jams with, a coffee-brewing non-binary centaur named Chet, a loud-mouthed Gorgon with a major attitude problem and so many more quirky supporting characters. 

Moonstruck isn’t without its flaws, though. One--at moments Magic To Brew feels like a second or even third volume in the Moonstruck series because these characters are hurled at us with little context and a “familiarity” like we should know them. 

Two-- the last page of each chapter is dedicated to a Q&A sesh, “Ask A Know-It-All” with a “celebrity” creature from Blitheton who we’ve never met. Compared to the rest of Moonstruck these side stories are really just extremely juvenile and glaringly devoid of the fizzy, fun genuine humor in the narrative. 

And three-- Kate Leth’s “Pleasant Mountain Sisters” comic panels are so stylistically different than Beagle’s art that every time they appear in Moonstruck it’s jarring. The overly simplified message and how it connects back to Moonstruck’s core narrative is so ob-vi-ous that it’s almost an insult to the reader. Welp. Although it’s probably meant to be a satire of the genre this needless and cringey side story or story within a story could easily be snipped out of Moonstruck’s linear storytelling without any kind of consequence. If anything, it would open up more space for the story we actually care about! 

That said, the magical mayhem and misadventures of Moonstruck are sure to please fans of Kim Reaper, Gravity Falls, Over The Garden Wall, Spirits podcast, and anyone who loves them some werewolves, lesbians, centaurs with penchants for sass and dad jokes, and latte art that looks like kittens. With its hilarity, punchy and playful writing, Shae Beagle’s cute and charming illustrations and the brilliance of colorist Caitlin Quirk’s dreamy, candy-colored aesthetic, Moonstruck is impossible to not love! Witty AF with an engaging, fast-paced plot and an intersectional design Moonstruck is one of the top can’t-miss graphic novels of this year. 

Highly recommended.