Tag: Secrets of Camp Whatever

It’s winter in Nowhere and it’s time for the big showdown. Willow (now with pink hair) and her friends are up against a prophecy, a Big Bad, a Bigger Bad and a storyline that’s darker overall than the first two Volumes.

There’s a siren, gnomes with snowballs and a glorious, evil manticore named Todd who loves cookies. I really like Todd.

Molly gets the extra page time in this Volume that I was hoping for and some characters I thought we’d left in previous Volumes have guest appearances.

We visit a ghostly graveyard. There are ghouls and spirit reapers, which are cuter than their name suggests.

There’s rock throwing, falling and things that go boom.

I love Willow. She’s determined and resilient. Over the course of the series, she’s proven she’s a loyal friend and can pull off whatever hair colour she chooses.

Willow is amazing but my favourite character of the series is Mim. No matter how much time I spend with her it’s never enough.

The artwork drew me to the first Volume and has helped keep me engaged throughout the series. The human characters are expressive, the magical creatures are imaginative and I love the colour palette.

I’m definitely tempted to start calling out random words to garden gnomes to see if I can reanimate them.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Oni Press for the opportunity to read this graphic novel.

Once Upon a Blurb

After former camp leader Clarence P’sketty Tooter is freed from a hypnosis spell, he remembers everything, including that pesky pre-teen Willow and her scrappy friends. But most importantly, he remembers the ancient mystery surrounding Nowhere’s sleep-away camp. Now, Tooter seeks revenge against Willow and her friends, and inadvertently awakens a long-dormant evil which seeks to destroy the world in the epic conclusion to the Secrets of Camp Whatever trilogy.

It’s been two months since Willow attended Camp … Whatever, where she participated in the usual summer camp activities. Like sneaking out of her cabin with her friends to solve mysteries and spending time with a vampire, gnomes and other magical folk.

Now her friends are helping her celebrate her thirteenth birthday. There’s Violet. One of her roles in this Volume is reminding us why we all need to be reading more books. There’s Emma, who has a secret. And there’s Rand, a werewolf.

Elric gifts Willow her great-great grandmother Rose’s spell book before he mysteriously disappears. Willow has Rose’s book in her possession for a good few hours before it’s stolen and taken through the swirly pink portal in her lounge room, which I promise wasn’t there a minute ago. Naturally, Willow follows the thief. I would have too.

It’s a good thing her friends are there to help her investigate and be on the lookout for anything weird.

Willow learns that sometimes wishes do come true, whether you really mean them to or not. There’s a secret meeting, a troll, a wishing well and a forest frog. Toast is there as well. Oh, and an invisible pixie-corn.

We learn more about the prophecy that we first heard about in Volume 1. I’m expecting an action packed conclusion.

We didn’t get to spend anywhere near as much time with Molly as I would have liked but hopefully she’ll get more page time in Volume 3.

I enjoyed my second read of this graphic novel much more than the first. The first time I read it, it had been so long since I’d read Volume 1 that I’d forgotten too much about who was who and what Willow and her friends had experienced at Camp … Whatever. This time I read them back to back, which helped immensely.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Oni Press for the opportunity to read this graphic novel.

Once Upon a Blurb

When twelve-year-old Willow went to her weird new town’s even weirder summer camp, she didn’t expect to get caught up in an ancient mystery involving forest-dwelling vampires, living garden gnomes, and other completely bonkers creatures most people would never believe exist. Now she’s not only involved, she’s marked — too close to the heart of an ages-old quest for power and control than she should be, and too concerned about her new friends and the dangers they face to let them go it alone. With the help of a spell book and her scrappy crew of camp friends, Willow is about to step through a doorway to magic and discovery that will change her world forever.