Graphic Novel Review - 'My Aunt Is a Monster' by Reimena Yee

'My Aunt Is a Monster' is a colourful, adorable and touching adventure graphic novel. It does have pacing issues, and tonal issues, leaving the whole thing feeling kind of erratic, and I can understand it being criticised as a bamboozling mess. Yet, in the end, I find I don't mind.

It's a high concept idea, about a little blind orphan girl who loves stories, and her former adventurer aunt who is cursed to look like a makara - sweet and simple enough. Then, along with the aunt's extremely versatile, butt-kicking nanny (and, unbeknownst to them, their invisible doglike pet), they go exploring to another country together, much to the girl's excitement, to where the aunt was originally cursed, in fact - again, cool. But then there's a sudden 'Indiana Jones'/twisted 'Mission Impossible' plot introduced near the middle; along with the monster aunt's own goals, there's this secret agent service devoted to spreading chaos in the world, and have done so throughout the decades. Because why not?

Anything goes in this children's story, it seems.

I wanted to read 'My Aunt Is a Monster' because I love love the author's previous graphic novel, 'Séance Tea Party', and the diversity of a blind POC protagonist. Her name is Safia Haziz, and she is eleven-years-old, had recently lost her bookseller parents in a bookshop fire, is still grieving, and she loves to listen to stories being told to her by her family, and through audiobooks and tapes. She wishes to travel the world and become an adventurer and finder of "strange and wonderous things and observations", like her famous distant aunt, Walteranne Hakim Whimsy, whom she just met and now lives with. Aunty Whimsy had "disappeared" one day, but actually she's been a recluse in her "haunted" house for the past decade. Safia does not know the truth about her condition...

It's rare enough to see any disability rep in a main character anywhere, but I can't think of any book I've read where the protag is blind, so that was new and excellent for me. It is written at the beginning of this book that Reimena Yee did her research and contacted members of the blind and visually impaired community and their allies, so kudos there.

Overall, 'My Aunt Is a Monster' is a fun, cartoony, innovative, imaginative fantasy adventure comic. It contains loads of female characters - and nonbinary rep in the form of Aunty Whimsy's "arch rival", Prof. Dr. Cecilia "Pineapple Tart" Choi - and the first act is sweeter and more wholesome and lovely than the rest (the fairy tale-like prologue is so wonderful and sad). Nonetheless, I recommend it, for it also contains themes of family love and trust, living life to the full, complicated friendships, seclusion and fear of discovery of identity, and questioning loyalty and legacies.

Can't forget about Aunty Whimsy! She is a great, funny and tragic character in her own right. She reminds me of Eda from 'The Owl House' and Sisu from 'Raya and the Last Dragon'. She'll learn a lot from young Safia, and vice versa, especially concerning trust, and secret and promise keeping, breaking and revealing. There are hints in the story that Aunty Whimsy is far from straight, too.

'My Aunt Is a Monster' is a keeper. Goddesses know it's not as perfectly polished, structured, flowing and flawless as 'Séance Tea Party', but its heart, creativity, and dedication are there, and it should be enjoyed as its own separate work. Of adventure!

The only real similarity to 'Séance Tea Party': There's a ghost girl, though she's barely in the story as she's confined to Aunty Whimsy's garden, as a "Gardener Ghost", and it's not clear at all if Safi knows her frontyard friend is a ghost, or even if Aunty Whimsy knows she exists.

Messy but fun and heartfelt!

Final Score: 3.5/5