Pumpkinheads
Faith Erin Hicks & Rainbow Rowell
“Deja and Josiah are seasonal best friends.
Every autumn, all through high school, they’ve worked together at the best pumpkin patch in the whole wide world. (Not many people know that the best pumpkin patch in the whole wide world is in Omaha, Nebraska, but it definitely is.) They say good-bye every Halloween, and they’re reunited every September 1.
But this Halloween is different—Josiah and Deja are finally seniors, and this is their last season at the pumpkin patch. Their last shift together. Their last good-bye.
Josiah’s ready to spend the whole night feeling melancholy about it. Deja isn’t ready to let him. She’s got a plan: What if—instead of moping and the usual slinging lima beans down at the Succotash Hut—they went out with a bang? They could see all the sights! Taste all the snacks! And Josiah could finally talk to that cute girl he’s been mooning over for three years . . .
What if their last shift was an adventure?”
-Goodreads
With the combination of Rainbow Rowell and Faith Erin Hicks, a gorgeous cover with great colors, and a story set in a pumpkin patch I thought I was going to love Pumpkinheads. It was underwhelming and mostly was trying (and failing) to be escapist fluff.
The art was the strongest part of this story by far. The coloring choices and character design are great, and I loved seeing diversity in body shape in both protagonists and background characters. But that’s about where my love for this story stops.
The adventure promised in the blurb is lackluster at best, as most of it is spent with Deja pushing pushing pushing Josiah to go talk to the girl he’s been crushing on the last three years because every place they go thinking she’ll be there winds up being a few steps behind her.
I don’t mind tropes. I’m a big fan of romance and fluff. But this whole story lacked depth for both Deja and Josiah. I have ideas for how the story could have been more impactful, and I think for a first attempt at writing a comic, Rowell needed more guidance. The superficiality of the story can and will be read by some as light-hearted fluffy romance, but as someone who enjoys reading light-hearted fluffy romance, this missed so many marks.
Josiah’s “ah-ha” moment and the talk they have thereafter is good-probably the best bits of dialogue in the book, and I wanted more of that. Unfortunately, it’s also basically the end of the book. It’s not that I wanted Pumpkinheads to be longer, I simply wanted it to be better.
Deja I wanted to love, and she had the makings for me to do so. A chubby black queer girl? But these labels were the only thing used to give her brief characterization, and neither she nor Josiah seemed particularly realistic.
Ultimately, I’m glad this book didn’t take too long to read (about 30 minutes), but I feel little inclination to read it again. Even based off the blurb, I had an inkling of how this story would go, and I was disappointed it didn’t do more. Unfortunately nothing really standout about this graphic novel besides the art.
The Little Book Witch 