Hey, look! It’s another graphic novel review! And it’s another graphic novel that I requested from Netgalley! Except this graphic novel is so much different than to what I normally read in graphic novel format, and it definitely has a different artwork style than to what I’m used to. But hey. I like branching out when it comes to graphic novels, so I wanted to give Spectacle a go!

Pragmatic engineer Anna works as a psychic in the Samson Brothers Circus, but she doesn’t believe in anything supernatural—until her twin sister Kat is murdered and comes back as a very demanding ghost. Sharing a room with her sister was hard, but now they’re sharing a body while trying to identify the killer. With few leads, a troupe full of secretive folk, and strange paranormal occurrences popping up around the circus, solving the case seems near impossible. But the murderer in their midst may be the least of their problems…

I was definitely weary before I started reading this. I’m not a fan of the whole circus/carnival themed stories. I’ve read quite a few such as Caraval, Daughter of the Burning City e.t.c… and the only one that I can say that I have absolutely loved was Caraval. DOTBC was enjoyable but not as good as Caraval, and then the other carnival/circus books that I’ve read have been awful… So yeah. I was definitely weary when going into this, but it sounded interesting so I was intrigued.

I actually really enjoyed reading this. I fell in love with the sisterly relationship between Anna and Kat. I know that the blurb that I’ve included says that Kat is murdered and just to let you know, THAT’S NOT A SPOILER! IT’S ALL GOOD, GUYS! It happens within the first couple of pages and the rest of the volume is about Anna trying to figure out who killed her.

On top of this, Anna can actually see her sister’s ghost and the banter between them is just brilliant. And because of the ghosts, there is such a good supernatural element of the book, because it turns out that Kat’s ghost is not the only ghost that Anna can see…

When it comes to the artwork, it’s not really the type of artwork that I’m used to; I prefer much darker types of illustrations. Spectacle definitely falls into the category of more ‘cartoon’ illustrations and reminds me of the fun type of artwork of Lumberjanes.

The only negative that I have about this volume is that the ending was very abrupt. I didn’t know whether it was just a formatting error – because that happened to me when reading Shadowman – or whether it just had an abrupt ending. I do think that this series has a lot of potential, and I hope that in the next volume, the abrupt ending has a little bit of an explanation because I was left so confused. It wasn’t even that it ended on a cliff-hanger… It just… Ended…

If it wasn’t for the ending, I probably would have given this volume 4 stars. But alas, the ending meant that I gave it 3.5.

Disclaimer: this book was sent to me in exchange for an honest review