We discussed Alison McGhee’s What I Leave Behind and Lize Meddings’s The Sad Ghost Club I on March 14, 2024. McGhee’s 2019 YA novel tells the story of sixteen-year-old Will, who tries to cope with the misery of his father’s suicide by doing some good in the world and to those around him. Meddings’s 2021 graphic novel introduces us to a secret society for the anxious and alone, a club most of us need at least once in a while.
PADERBORN2READ Rating for What I Leave Behind by Alison McGhee
2.5 out of 5
Members’ Opinions
“I enjoyed reading this text, found the plot endearing and thought the characters realistic. But it is the sort of teen and YA story that tries to tackle deep and dark topics without really diving into them—that does make sense because you do not want to further traumatize any teenagers going through grief themselves, it does not make for a coherent story, though.
The text’s format with 100 chapters of 100 words each is conceptually interesting, but it did not quite convince me because the snapshots of the protagonist’s life felt too rushed at some times and too slow at others, the strict structure seemed like a constraint to the story to me. If you see the text as poetry rather than prose, you might form a very different opinion on this, though.”
“The premise of the book was promising and for me, unfortunately, the point that made it less enjoyable than it could have been. 100 chapters with 100 words each and then some topics and a story that needed more than those 10,000 words. Plus, I just didn’t like the excessive references to music.”
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PADERBORN2READ Rating for The Sad Ghost Club I by Lize Meddings
3 out of 5
Members’ Opinions
“16-year-old me would have needed that. The message of this graphic novel is very obvious, but the story itself still has room to evolve further. This is only the beginning!”
“I loved the cute ghost characters and the even cuter cat named Pocket. The drawings are really well done in my opinion because they convey a lot of emotion despite giving the ghost characters only two black dots for eyes and a little mouth.
I am not quite happy with the plot, though. Similar to What I Leave Behind, this is a graphic novel targeted at teens and young adults who may suffer themselves from anxiety, depression, or being disconnected from the people around them. Obviously, you would want to educate them a little bit about options like therapy and also show them that things may not be hopeless as soon as you find your kindred spirits. But the way this graphic novel quite suddenly jolts into a pep talk and ends with the founding of the Sad Ghost Club without having really had the necessary character development for that failed to convince me.”
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