Thanks to Netgalley and Six Foot Press for the arc in exchange for my honest review.

I really enjoyed this book from start to finish. The art style really appealed to me, and I really wasn't expecting the story to go in the way that it did. The cast of characters were entertaining and interesting, but Mary was definitely my favourite.

The only reason I haven't rated 5 stars is because I felt it dropped off quite abruptly at the end - I can only hope that there will be another one continuing Mary's adventures!

<i>The ARC of this book was provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.</i>

This was a cute fluffy graphic novel for baby goths. I'd like to say that even with the dangers I know I'd certainly want to help heal monsters. I appreciate that our heroine doesn't play coy she says what she means and she's honest with her friends. While she may have some massive ancestral shoes to fill she just might be discovering that there are so many pathways to finding ourselves and our callings.

🦶

*Thank you Netgalley and the Publisher for providing me with an early copy of this book for review,all opinions are my own*

It just wasn't good, the idea of ​​the story itself is very good but the execution left something to be desired.
The story is meaningless and does not have a good explanation for events.
The art is also not my favorite and the characters are terrible.
Overall I don't recommend it was a waste of my time and I just finished reading it because it was a graphic novel.

An enjoyable graphic novel that introduces the reader to several relatives of the infamous Mary Shelley. The main character who is the great, great, great, great, great granddaughter of Mary Shelley suddenly finds herself at the mercy of ghosts and monsters requesting her help. At first, she has no idea why they are all asking things of her, but she soon learns she has magical powers that allow her the power to heal all of them. The only con I had was that I felt it ended too abruptly and it seemed like there was more of the story to be told.

Mary Shelley is a teenager and being pressured to follow in the family legacy of celebrated writers. Mary doesn’t want to follow in the footsteps of the Shelley women. However she soon discovers the hidden family secret of being able to heal monsters.

This is my first graphic novel. A great little story, I like the characters but felt like I needed more. I finished it within an hour. Really hoping for more editions so we can delve deeper into the characters. I did love the artwork by Yishan Li. The whole thing animated my goth teen self.

Thank you to Six Foot Press for this advance copy.

This graphic novel was interesting to say the least. I loved the premise of this story, Mary Shelley’s great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter having magical powers to heal monsters? Who wouldn’t love that? I’m not going to say I didn’t like it, because I did. It was a fun story to read, buuuut, it was very fast paced, to the point where it felt like it skipped important scenes to get to the point, and a lot of it was quite unrealistic for something that had monsters roaming the world.

Spoilers start here.

For example, Mary (our protagonist), was very unphased by the presence of real life monsters in her world. She had barely any reaction to the fact that there was a monster, which to me just didn’t seem right. Surely a sixteen-year-old would be freaked out about monsters being real? This dude turns up out of the blue and has one foot, and asks her to sew his other foot back on in her dad’s office. She has no reaction. It just baffles me.

End of spoilers.

I really enjoyed the actual story, despite its jumpiness, it was pretty easy to assume what had happened and go from there, I wish it wasn’t the case, and I’ve never noticed this in any other graphic novel I have read. It kind of took away from the story a little bit if I’m being honest.

Can I just say-the art style of this graphic novel was phenominal!! I loved it so much, it really kept my eye from wandering and the colouring was beautifully done.

The writing was a little cliché, but it hooked me nonetheless.

3/5 stars.

This was a fun read! Let me just start by saying that I love the art and Mary’s goth vibes.

Mary Shelley is the descendant of famous writer Mary Shelley. With such legacy expectations are high, most women in their family were educated in literature and became succesful writers, just like Mary’s mom who hopes the same will be true for her daughter. Mary however, is not really feeling it. She does not enjoy the events her mother drags her to, and she isn’t very good or even interested in writing. This leads to arguments at home, her mother insisting on choosing her path while Mary just wants to figure out what she wants to do with her life. Soon, she learns she has a gift after all, she can help monsters. Is this something she wants for herself though? And what about her family, what happens when they find out?

The art was great and I love the intro part, being introduced to the family by the original Mary and the family’s famous members,

I really enjoyed Mary’s character, she is quirky and fun. She is a true goth and I loved every outfit of hers. It was great that she sometimes interrupted the narration, especially as she was talking about being a lousy writer. I loved that she had a good friend, who was by her side through the creepy parts too. I would have loved to learn more about her. Mary’s family obviously cares about her, even if she often butts heads with them, mostly her Mom about her future choices.

Adam, was cute and a very nice person but I am a bit iffy on the age gap, supernatural being or not.

I found the monsters a bit random, laser eyed demons? A not-quite-dinossaur? Talking possesed stuffed animals? But overall they were cute.
I felt like there could have been more worldbuilding done, we didn’t learn a lot about demons or why they were worse than ghosts.. There was a pact mentioned several times between monsters and humans but we never learned the details. I would have loved if we got to learn more about the infamous Guidebook but there seemed no time for it. Although there is a fun little monster guide at the end of the book which was very cute.

I don’t know if the part about the original Mary Shelley being a goth and having famous parents were all true, but this book made me want to learn more about her.

This was a fun read but I am not sure if there is any sequel planned, the story did not end on any particular cliffhanger. I enjoyed this a lot as a standalone, I don’t know if I’d be hyped enough for a second book though.

A really fun idea translated well into his medium. Definitely think this is the best medium for this story; it really allowed the teen angst in Mary's expressions brilliantly.

I loved the idea of this story. How Mary Shelley, an amazing woman in her own right, has this amazing legacy that she's passed onto her family. And that they had taken her inspiration and become powerful women themselves. Then there's teenage Mary who doesn't know what to do with her future, but had inherited monster healing powers from her namesake. Genius.

I was a little thrown at the start, it wasn't immediately obvious to me that our Mary was narrating this story.

I would probably put this story more in the middle grade category that young adult. It moved quite fast and there wasn't a lot of detail. I feel that whilst it's a graphic novel and will obviously never have the depth of a written novel, the stories are still a bit more complex in other YA graphic novels.

Though this was a great beginning to this series and I thoroughly enjoyed Mary finding her destiny and becoming an essential part of a new community. Very intriguing.

Beautiful art and great concept! I love the idea of Mary Shelley's descendants all trying to live up to her memory or follow in her footsteps, and then those who want to forge their own path in life without being told what to do. I especially love the supernatural/sci-fi theme of the story, though some parts were a bit corny.

With graphic novels it can be a bit more difficult to get to know your characters well or to get much out of the plot, and with Mary there were some aspects of the story that I wish got a bit more flesh out - namely her best friends special gift, how she was able to learn her 'gift' so fast, how her mother rejected that certain part of herself, everything about the monsters, and the pact the demons were talking about. I think that this is just the first book in a series so I'm hoping that that's why the story seemed very incomplete in that aspect. The romance was also a bit too fast for me.

But it was a lovely spooky story with gothic vibes - and a great story to read with Halloween coming up!

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for providing the e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I really loved the concept of this. Mary is the Great (x5) Granddaughter of Mary Shelley, and while her whole family consists of famous writers, she does not know if that's what she wants to do in life.
She then figures out that she can heal monsters and that monsters are real.
However, the execution was a bit lacking for me. I did not feel that we had enough time to process each new element before more reveals were given to us. There were reveals about Mary, her family, her friends, the monsters, and some sort of demon creature that is coming after her.
All these elements just felt thrown together and I wanted more from it.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for providing the E-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I love the meaning behind this; telling women you don't need to live up expectations and you can make your own path. Its your life and you should do what makes you happy. The artwork is amazing and the characters are detailed beautifully. Each character's personality and back story is very well thought out.

This graphic novel was not my cup if tea but it was quite interesting, especially the main character and the monsters.

Thank you for the chance to read in exchange for an honest review.

Right away, some of the strengths of this graphic novel were the premise and illustration qualities. The premise is that a descendant of Mary Shelly is modern day angst filled teenager trying to figure out who/what they are. Turns out some sort of medium or something. Therein lies the cons of this — there is so much going on, so much to take it panel but panel, that by the time i got to the monsters and other figures, I was confused and quite frankly disengaged. The story speeds up fully and doesn’t stop until I was left wondering how this would’ve been better imagined as part of a series or at least split up by sections better

Mary Shelly's great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter has powers that allow her to heal monsters? Is a great concept for a graphic novel. Unfortunately, the structure of the novel was a little muddled and the storyline became confused. I could figure it out but I did have to read several pannels over again to fully understand what was going. Outside of this issue, I really liked the novel. It was hilarious and fun and was just a nice light read. Yishan Li's artwork was stunning and perfectly complimented the spooky-estic vibes. I enjoyed reading Mary and would read the next installment but it did have a few flaws.

This graphic novel had a lot to promise but I feel like in most aspects it failed to deliver them.
I had no problems with the style or quality of the illustrations, they were very pretty and suited the "teenage angst" vibe.
But the procession of events in the story don't make a lot of sense and while it is humorous for that reason, I don't think that was particularly intended for every single event. I think it would have worked better as the story of a girl who can heal monsters without the Mary Shelley bit.

Mary: The Adventures of Mary Shelley’s Great-Great-Great-Great-Great Grandaughter by Brea Grant is the story of Mary, an angsty teen who doesn’t want to live up to her family’s legacy of being a famous writer. Her life is changed when she realizes she’s actually inherited the responsibility of caring for monsters.
This graphic novel was underwhelming. The dialogue was very clunky and the pressure from Mary’s family was extremely over handed.
There was a weirdly forced romance between Mary and Adam, the original monster. It felt like it came out of nowhere and had no point where there was any substance.
This graphic novel felt like it had no plot and the only really redeeming factor was the art, but I also don’t know that I wouldn’t have liked it when I was 13, so I’m not going to rate it too low.
Overall, I’d recommend this for anyone who’s still coming out of their angsty vampire phase.

I really enjoyed the art style and thought that the monsters were interesting and some even cute. Even with the short time spent with the characters, I like each of their personalities and the relationships with each other was clear. It would be nice to have everyone's clear motivations since I was more confused that intrigued to why Mary's family kept wanting her to write a novel.

I also was confused to where Adam came from and how quickly Mary just accepted him, and the monsters, being there really quickly.

I also found the bit at the end where the monsters are explained was nice and it was cool to see the monsters completely.

It felt like a simplified version of a full story and wish it was longer and more draw out.

*Mary* tells the story of, well, a girl named Mary. But she's not just any Mary. She's from the lineage of the great Mary Shelley, someone who accomplished a lot at a young age, even having all odds against her. And every other woman in her family has achieved similar, great things in their lifetimes, and expect the same from our protagonist. However, as every other young person nowadays, Mary is lost. She hasn't figured out her calling and feels pressured to do so, and that's where the story starts.

But, of course, you can't have Mary Shelley without a sprinkle of fantasy and paranormal elements. Or, in the case of this graphic novel, you can't have Mary Shelley without a bucket of sprinkles of fantasy and paranormal elements. With a wink to galvanization, which refers back to one of the original Shelley's inspirations for her novel (can you tell I recently watched Mary Shelley the movie), the paranormal elements are introduced in a quirky way, when the main character accidentally resuscitates a frog in her Biology class.

From cute dead boys to another famous author in the body of a plush bunny, the story shows us how Mary comes to the realization of who she is and what her purpose in life is. I wish it were that easy for all of us! I really liked the aspect of self-discovery that the book presents and the portrayal of someone who is struggling with knowing what to do with their life, because that's how we all feel at one point or another during our lifetimes.

The downside to this was probably the pacing. So much was happening, so fast! It was mini-adventure after mini-adventure, reveal after reveal, and we didn't have a chance to get to know some of the characters who have such an influence in Mary's life - especially Rhonda! What we find out about her is super cool but never really gets explored... The ending definitely left something to be desired, as I felt like it didn't tie up the loose ends that it had just untied.

Still, it was a fun story overall and if I had the opportunity to see more of what Mary does, I would do it!

"don't hit anything and have fun, right? rules for life."

I received this book from NetGalley as an eARC in exchange for a review.

Mary follows the great-great-great-great-probably some more greats-granddaughter of Mary Shelly. Apparently the women in their family are cursed.

I didn't dislike this book but I also didn't like it. I don't even know what opinion I have of this book other than I am just whelmed, not over, not under, just whelmed. The art style was cool. I didn't really dig the font choice. The story was original. I just didn't enjoy it as much as I would've liked.

I really enjoyed the premise of this graphic novel and thought the illustrations were beautiful. I loved Mary as a character, however, I found her reactions to certain events unrealistic. I really enjoyed that it was based on Mary Shelley's descendants and had a dark sort of vibe to it more creepiness would've been nice.

The graphic novel could've been at least another 100pages or another volume as I felt that the story was very rushed and at times felt like I had missed important parts of the plot as it seemed to jump from one event to the next. In addition to the plot jumping around, I wish there was more character development like Mary's character was.

Overall it was a fun and quick read it just let me down a little.
Thank you Netgalley for an early copy