Your monster gets hungry, and this is the only way it can eat. And if you don’t feed it, it will get out again, and hurt someone else.

The Deep Dark, p. 173-4

Synopsis

Mags Herrera has a secret. It lives in her basement and feeds on her blood. Because of it, Mags keeps to herself, going through her day working, caring for her frail grandmother, and every night, descending the steps to the basement. Mags doesn’t need anyone else.

Then Nessa, Mags’s childhood friend, comes back to her small town near Joshua Tree. Nessa makes Mags feel safe and warm, and Mags is suddenly in danger of sharing her secret for the first time. But Nessa has a secret, too, and soon she and Mags are irreversibly caught up in the darkness that lives inside us all.

Review

Each of Molly Knox Ostertag’s graphic novels is crafted with such deliberation and care, and The Deep Dark is no exception. This hefty graphic novel is at once a horror, a romance, and a coming-of-age; it is magical realism at its finest, with themes of mental health, trust, and responsibility that will ring true to many young adults.

Ostertag uses color in this book to amazing effect. Most of the book is black-and-white, except for glimpses of Mags’s childhood memories, which are texturized to suggest pinhole camera photography. Each panel’s emphasis on character makes this book such a page-turner; I read it in one day, and then read it again that evening. The story is metaphor, it is magic; I can’t recommend it enough.

CW: stalking, attempted suicide