"Anya's Ghost" by Vera Brosgol

**Lots of Spoilers!**

Anya's Ghost, by Vera Brosgol is a graphic novel about a girl named Anya. Anya is ashamed about standing out in her little New England town, which includes hiding her hard to pronounce Russian last name and keeping the secret that she used to have a weird accent in kindergarten before she went to ESL, let alone dieting to keep off her muffin top. When Anya falls down an old well to discover a 98-year old body of a young woman, she's scared, yeah. But what's scarier is that the ghost of this certain corpse, named Emily Reilly, starts following Anya around...

This is the first graphic novel I read this year, and I'm insanely happy with this book. The story and artistic design of the book was awesome and really entertaining to read. It was dark, but not dark enough to give me nightmares. It also had a nice neat message to all us teenage girls in there. I especially connected with Anya.

The book starts off with Anya being really self-conscious, and not a very nice person. She wants to be accepted by the "cool" crowds at school, and does stuff she doesn't want to do, like smoking or dieting so she can work towards that. She is so embarrassed about her family and heritage, which is a giant part of who someone is, that she lies about her last name.

When Emily's character comes in, this pushes Anya to become the person she wants to be, because now she basically knows everything she could hope to. She has her own personal spy. But this also shows Anya the bad side of the "cool" kids. Sure, Anya may not be popular, but she doesn't cheat on her boyfriend like Sean, Anya's crush, did to his girlfriend Elizabeth. Anya has people she can trust. There's a bad side to everything, and you can't want one part of it and not the whole package.

a little preview of the art style :)

This is what makes Emily's character the antagonist in the end (or the past? I don't know). She can't accept that she can't have what she wants, like Anya did after the party at Matt's house, so Emily snapped. She killed her crush and his girlfriend then died, kind of in the spirit of karma. When she tries to live her life through Anya and that doesn't go the way she wanted it to either, she snaps again, and returns to violence as an answer. Only when Anya explains that you have to be happy with what you have and that you can't have everything you want is when Emily realizes all she's done and leaves the Earth.

Elizabeth, queen bee at Anya's high school, almost did the opposite of Emily, she found out Sean's unfaithfulness and that she couldn't get him the way she wanted, but instead of snapping, she bent so she could still "have" Sean and the image that came with him. She sits idly by while Sean hooks up with other girls. Elizabeth bent so far she broke in a different sense.

 I love the illustration too, because it's simple, but descriptive and clear. The color palate is awesome, matches the story perfectly.

Overall, this was a AMAZING book, with an excellent message. You have to be happy with what you have, and make the best of it. I recommend this book to Neil Gaiman and Hellboy fans and anyone (especially girls) who like a good, dark comic book.