Nothing will ever be as good as reading Scott Pilgrim for the first time

I was inspired to read this book after Renton’s excellent review. I stumbled across a used hard cover and the visuals were simply too stunning for me not to pick it up; deep blues and clear reds twisting and intertwining to create an intricate tree. There were no blurbs or summaries, just this tree on the back and a young woman floating in blue on the front cover.

And the artwork does not disappoint. O’Malley still manages to combine the styles of manga with that of a Sunday morning cartoon. It is cute, but always with a certain darkness behind. A darkness that haunts you long after you put the book down.

And you would not think there would be darkness in a book about a twenty-something trying to open a restaurant. Katie is a successful head-chef at “Seconds” trying to open a new restaurant that is all her own in a rundown building hidden away under a bridge on the wrong side of the city. Living above the old restaurant she frequently drives from there to follow the restoration process of the new restaurant, simply titled “Katie’s”. But the construction workers frequently stall, unforeseen problem keep propping up…and then there’s the question of Kate’s ex who suddenly turns up at “Seconds” again.

After an accident at the restaurant Katie wakes at night to discover a small blond girl on her dresser. The girl gives her a magic mushroom and a notepad that gives Katie the ability to alter the events of the past so the accident never happens. But Katie stumbles across a secret stash of the mushroom and suddenly she’s changing things farther and farther back.

The book is utterly predictable and that unfortunately brings it down from 5 stars to four. But the friendships and desires depicted are easy to identify with; we all get lost in our own past sometimes. The girl on the dresser is Lis, a house spirit who is made just present enough to be an actual character with real motivations, but also translucent enough to serve as a memory of all the times you thought you saw something out of the corner of your eyes. And Lis gets mad and her madness is frightening. Especially when the new house spirit from Katie’s new restaurant is accidentally transferred to Seconds. As Katie keeps changing the past farther and farther back the new house spirit grows like a shadow into darkness until, inevitably, Katie must make peace with both the old and the new house spirit.