I was just saying that a story about Jesse might make a cool spin-off, and here we have one.
The story idea was a good one, if rather gross. I wasn't madly in love with the artistic depictions of Mercy and Adam, and the writing was a little corny.
I liked seeing things from Jesse's point of view, though, and it was refreshing to have a teen character who didn't have all the right quips to say to the people bullying her.

2019 reread: 3 stars definitely stands, a low 3. I liked getting a story from Jessi’s POV, and reading this right after reading Dead Heat gave it extra meaning, but I still don’t like the art or the dialogue much. ( )

Creepy, but an excellent story for the medium. I like the graphic novel format for extras -- fills out the world nicely, but stands on its own. ( )

According to a note opposite the copyright page, Mercy Thompson: Hopcross Jilly takes place between book 7 in Patricia Briggs' Mercy Thompson series, Frost Burned, and book 8, Night Broken. It also takes place just after the fourth book in her Alpha and Omega series, Dead Heat.

The book opens with the Columbia Basin Pack in wolf form and Mercy in coyote form on a hunt -- a hunt that is stopped when they find a skeleton. More skeletons will be found in the land of Jillian Cross, who was old when middle-aged Detective McGuire was a boy. There will be flashbacks to show us how some of the children those skeletons used to be died. The flashbacks are to 1973, '120 years ago,' and 1972. Judging by the climax, there were plenty of victims.

Notes:

1. The 'Gabe' Jesse is texting with is probably Gabriel Sandoval, Mercy's former helper at her garage.

2. Jesse's biology teacher is Mr. Richford.

3. Ray Harryhausen was a famous stop-motion animator for movies. He animated a skeleton army for 'Jason and the Argonauts'.

4. Brer Rabbit (also Br'er) is a trickster character from tales told by Black slaves in the USA. Joel Chandler Harris wrote down these stories and invented an ex-slave named Uncle Remus to narrate them. Disney made a cartoon version of the tar baby story for their 1946 film, 'Song of the South'. I saw it on TV when I was a child, but it's hard to find today because it's racist.

5. 'Rebel without a comb' is a play on the title of a famous 1955 film, "Rebel Without a Cause".

6. Adam with his question about Mudville and Jesse with her response about 'Mighty Casey' are referring to the poem, 'Casey at the Bat' by Ernest Lawrence Thayler. Disney not only did an animated version of the poem, they did a sequel, 'Casey Bats Again'.

7. One of the fairy tales depicted appears to be 'Snow White' . The boy losing his partially-eaten candy cane as his hands turn to hooves while a nastily-smiling fairy watches reminds me of a scene in 'Pinocchio'.

8. Beatrix Potter wrote The Tale of Peter Rabbit.

9. 'Security is my business' is similar to the saying, 'Danger is my business'. I'm most familiar with that saying from the 1967 cartoon, 'Cool McCool,' which I watched when I was a girl.

The Mercy Thompson and Alpha and Omega series don't shy away from the bigotry humans show the fae and the werewolves (and would doubtless show the witches and vampires if they knew such exist). Some of the supernatural beings are just as prejudiced against humans. It was nice to see how Detective McGuire went from insinuating that the werewolves were responsible for the children's skeletons to politely seeking their help.

Mercy's stepdaughter, Jesse Hauptman, is human, but many of the students at River View High School see her as a monster because her father is a werewolf. Jesse has few friends, so she's glad to meet the new girl, Jill. We readers get to be alarmed long before Mercy is. Unlike Mercy, we get to see Hopcross Jilly terrifying bad little boys and girls during the flashbacks. We get to see how she killed them, but not the actual deaths, for which I am grateful. I didn't think the kids she killed in those flashbacks and the present day were THAT bad, not even Kayla Young, the mean girl who bullies Jesse (Kayla is the niece of an earlier victim, Kayleigh Phillips). However, when Ariana Brewster is telling Mercy about Hopcross Jilly, there's a page depicting bad children -- a bully, thieves, and a boy muffling his laughter as he hides behind a barrel in a barn. What I assume are his parents are looking shocked, but I can't tell what they're looking at. If it's as bad as the nasty little boys laughing while they hang a cat by its neck from a tree limb on that same page -- well, I think Hopcross Jilly did humanity a service disposing of them before they could grow up to be serial killers.

This is not a comic for the squeamish, but it's a good horror story/urban fantasy, which is what I expect from Mercy Thompson.

Not bad at all. ( )

This graphic novel is set between books and features Mercy’s stepdaughter Jesse. The focus of the story is the pack finding skeletal remains in a field and Jesse meeting a new girl at school. While Mercy and Adam help the police find more bodies in the ground, Jesse is bringing the new girl, Jill up to speed on school and why certain cliques don’t like Jesse. While the investigation goes on kids from Jesse’s school start to disappear and fingers are pointing at her because her dad is a werewolf. Mercy finds a Fae connection to the bodies and is now on the hunt for a Fae killer that can look like anyone.

The story wraps up quite quickly and has the bonus of not requiring the reader to have read all the other books in the series in order to enjoy this one.


Digital review copy provided by the publisher through NetGalley
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