Seconds by Bryan Lee O'Malley

 

This week I'm doing a project called Hype Week, where I read the really popular books I've been putting off reading for years. Since graphic novels are pretty niche, this one might be cheating, but it was a nominee for the Goodreads Choice Awards in 2014, which I'd say at least nudges it at least partially into the mainstream.

SECONDS is a really good book and it wasn't what I was expecting at all. It's also totally different from the Scott Pilgrim series, which doesn't really age all that well. This standalone is about a woman named Katie, who's twenty-nine, and is a chef at a pretty successful restaurant and is now on the verge of opening her own. One day, one of her staff suffers a horrible accident in the kitchen, and she sees a mysterious girl in her room perching on an old dresser. Inside one of the drawers is a notepad for writing down mistakes, a list of instructions, and some mushrooms. When Katie eats the mushroom, the server is no longer burned. Everything is completely different.

...or is it?

This is like a cross between Groundhog's Day, Mirrormask, and Coraline, and I really, really enjoyed it. Katie is a perfect flawed heroine and even though she behaved selfishly, you could see how she was really trying to get her life to be the way she wanted it and how her perfectionism and impulsivity were constantly at war with each other, and how quickly that mix turned self-destructive. There's also a fairytale bent to this story that starts to turn really creepy towards the end. There were a couple parts that gave me actual chills. Less is definitely more going into this book, but I loved how strange it was, and I could totally see this being a movie, especially a creepy stop-motion one.

Also, Hazel is too precious for this world.

4.5 out of 5 stars