The Sad Ghost Club

by Lize Meddings

Genres: Graphic Novels
Pages: 248
Series: The Sad Ghost Club #1
Rating:

Synopsis:

Ever felt anxious or alone? Like you don't belong anywhere? Like you're almost... invisible? Find your kindred spirits at The Sad Ghost Club.

(You are not alone. Shhh. Pass it on.)

This is the story of one of those days - a day so bad you can barely get out of bed, when it's a struggle to leave the house, and when you do, you wish you hadn't. But even the worst of days can surprise you. When one sad ghost, alone at a crowded party, spies another sad ghost across the room, they decide to leave together. What happens next changes everything.

Because that night they start the The Sad Ghost Club - a secret society for the anxious and alone, a club for people who think they don't belong.

The Sad Ghost Club by Lize Meddings is a pretty short graphic novel (took me 15 minutes to read, despite the page count) which features two lonely, awkward teenagers befriending one another after a day of agonising whether they wanted to attend a party, and an awkward evening of not really speaking to anyone at the party. The concerns and anxieties are really familiar from my own teenage years — I was definitely a sad ghost.

I don’t know what it’d have meant to me as a teenager, but as an adult it felt a little overly simplistic, and Socks’ explanation of their difficulties with depression (and the way they urge SG to seek help) felt… cookie-cutter, and laid on with a trowel. Also, it’s really hard to follow which of them is which other than by dialogue. I’m not very visual, so perhaps there are clues I couldn’t pick up, but Socks and SG look pretty identical to me.

It’s probably great for the right audience, but I wasn’t it. Always glad to try new things, though!

Rating: 2/5