So imagine if you were a female teenage werewolf, who felt like an outsider even among your pack. And imagine if you happened to think you were making a supernatural connection with your crush, a girl you’ve known since grade four, but it turned out to be a bit of a miscommunication. And imagine what if your dad had passed away (being a werewolf, does not exempt people from death) and you are trying to deal with that? On top of all that what if you heard there was a group of werewolf hunters who allegedly had a cure for lycanthropy, and what if you thought that maybe if you were normal (whatever normal means), well that would solve everything?
Well if all of that applied to you dear reader, you’d be Tessa the teenage protagonist of Full Shift, a graphic novel written by Jennifer Dugan and Illustrated by Kristen Seaton.
This was such a fun (and surprisingly to me emotional at times) read. Centred on Tessa, it deals with a teenager who feels like she is an outsider amongst her family pack, and the pack is literal as she happens to be a werewolf. She’s got a younger sister, who now thanks to werewolf pack dynamics is her older sister, as your age is determined by the time of your first shift from human to wolf. This was just one of those little tidbits about the werewolf pack dynamics threaded through the graphic novel, and that was just great. The story also makes it clear that this is taking place in a world inhabited by many supernatural type folks (in fact the book also let me know there is a book called ‘Coven’ by these two creators) and I enjoyed the worldbuilding that was done.
I also loved the art in this, especially the way the various werewolf characters were drawn in their wolf, human, and half-shifted forms. The action was also well depicted, and while there was violence most of it was off-page and the moments shown were not overly graphic. There were some werewolves on small prey animal violence, but in a werewolf story, I almost expected that.
Plotline wise things did wrap up a tad neatly, but I wasn’t mad about it. I also did not expect the emotional gut punch that the story packed in one part. I legitimately teared up a bit. So yes, this is a book about learning to accept all parts of you, it’s got a diverse cast and a queer love story as a subplot. Oh and werewolves.