Ginn Hale's 3 favorite reads in 2023

This is a book that I return to like I’m reconnecting with childhood friends. Picking the book up never fails to bring me a smile, make me laugh, and, at times, fill me with the bittersweetness of knowing that I can’t return to my very first encounter with these characters but that I can cherish them all the more for having grown to know them, and their community, so very well.

Right away, the twists and turns of the mysteries gripped my attention—how did Drew’s knife end up in Dorian’s chest? Is the sudden rash of fires related to the murder, or is that clever misdirection? How does that rubber band wrapped around the victim’s wrist come into play? In fact, a deeply gratifying aspect of the collection is how naturalistically each individual mystery sets up the events of the next one. In the subsequent readings, I really appreciated the way clues to the resolution of the third mystery appeared even in the first, but so subtly that I hardly noticed them. 

What surprised me the most was how much more there was to the collection than a simple “whodunit.” Amidst the crimes and clues, I found a vibrant community, both in the island town of Orca’s Slough and in Eelgrass Bistro’s lively kitchen. Fascinating, nuanced, and funny people abound. Over the course of the entire book, many of them grow from prickly strangers into a determined, eccentric family that felt like my own. Because of that, the book doesn’t just stand up to multiple readings, it rewards them. Not only does the subtle interplay of all three mysteries deepen, but the characters and setting only grow more rich and nuanced.

Drew, a chef forced to turn amateur sleuth to prove his own innocence, doesn’t just solve mysteries and fall in love; he grows from a stranger to a dear friend who is all the more charming for his flaws and foibles. Mac, the deputy set on closing the cases, becomes all the more human and poignant in his determination. Lionel, the young, biracial kitchen assistant, absolutely blooms! While Evelyn and Julie, my absolute favorite elderly lesbian couple, make me believe in lifelong love and vivacity.

From beginning to end, and over again, this book is a delight!

On my first read of this book, I raced through the matte black pages reading as fast as I could, both to discover the ending and to reassure myself that the characters I adored could survive. (Horror, as a genre, can be cruel to the flawed, nerdy, and eccentric sorts of characters that I tend to sympathize with.) So it was my second, more measured, pass through the fantastically dark graphic novel that allowed me to absorb far more of its world and reflect on my own as well. As much as this story is about demons, human sacrifices, and horrific entities summoned from hellish realms, it’s also very much about how we each navigate our humanity.

When Ipo, the matriarch of her family, broods on how much of her heritage and personal history to pass on to her children, her dilemma truly resonated with me. Her circumstances and identity are both very real, (that of an immigrant from Hong Kong) and fantastical, (a demon-devouring, otherworldly entity.) Somehow they come together to make her quandary exceptionally relatable, particularly to people who’ve survived oppressive or violent environments.

At one point or another, many of us struggle with the question: How do we pass on the determination and resilience that kept us alive, without exposing the next generation to the same anguish that required those qualities of us? Whether we’re acting as parents, teachers, mentors, or just friends to younger people, most of us know that failure, frustration, heartache, rage, and grief are all inevitable and sometimes even necessary. But we also want to shield them from every kind of suffering. We know that they need experiences, sometimes even unpleasant experiences, to understand who they are and what they are capable of. But our own ruthless experiences make us wary of teaching them. We want to give them the resilience we’ve spent a lifetime building but without allowing them to understand, much less experience, who we are or how much that strength cost us. 

In that state of mind, it’s all too easy to withdraw and seem both demanding and uncaring, just as the character of Ipo does. But happily, this isn’t Ipo’s story alone. Instead, this book enriches its world and Ipo’s life with a splendid community. Her understated spouse Keon brings easy charm and mystery, while their clever and lovable children, Milly and Billy, fill the dark pages with eager energy. Their struggles to make their parents proud, while also establishing themselves as independent adults are so relatable. Milly’s romantic troubles, Billy’s gaming obsessions, and their shared work to keep their Hawaiian-inspired musubi shop, Spam, I Am!, afloat, are all so perfectly depicted that it briefly lulled me into feeling like I was reading a spirited slice-of-life story. All of which only heightened the threat of the hungry supernatural menace seeping into their lives. 

And because this is a fantastical horror story, the finale for both the mundane and the otherworldly conflicts is dynamic, startling, and entirely satisfying.

This is a book that I’ve returned to again and again over the years. Each time I seem to discover an aspect of the story that transforms it into something new. That’s a thrilling sensation, almost as if I’ve found a magical volume that hides an entire library of novels, philosophy, and history in just two hundred and eighty pages. 

On the surface, it ought to be a very simple piece of biography: a record of David Eastly’s work to recreate a decorative woodcarving that was consumed by a fire at Hampton Court Palace. Though that alone is gripping enough. An idealistic American artist being whisked away to an ancient castle in a foreign country and given a year to perfectly recreate a masterwork from ashes, or see his hard-earned reputation destroyed. It’s almost a fairytale right there! 

At the same time, Eastly’s work unfolds like a murder mystery. Every possible detail concerning the identity of the burned carving must be uncovered before it can be done justice. Even the seemingly obvious matter of the carving’s position and appearance come into question. Stripping away centuries of soot, wax, and varnish from the castle walls exposes telltale nail marks as well as the divide between truth and commodity peddled as history. 

On another reading, the tale becomes a ghost story, with Eastly acting as an artist and medium as he delves into the methods and history of the carving’s creator, Grinling Gibbons. Hampton Court’s spirits surround him and suffuse even the modern cuts of linden wood with their legacies. Or, as David Eastly describes it, “I was apprenticed to a phantom, you could say, and lived among mysteries.” 

And these are only a few of the perspectives I’ve discovered within this little book. Over the years, it’s been a thriller, a political satire, a meditation on the fall of artistry and the rise of technology, as well as a bittersweet memoir. But of course, it’s what remains constant in every reading that truly draws me back again and again. Because at its heart, the book is simply a love letter to the act of “making," that very human impulse to create something.  

As an author, creativity obviously drives my life and livelihood, but I believe that it exists in all of us. Like the many readings of this book, creativity can take a multitude of forms and expressions. It can blaze up in the audacious undertaking of professional artists, but also go unnoticed in the expertise of a home cook, or the lively conversation of a bartender. It exists in carpentry, crafts, education, and entertainment. It arises from any medium, be that marble or glitter and glue. It’s everywhere, anywhere, that one human being takes care and effort to make something for another, no matter how small or anonymous the undertaking may seem. It’s the celebration of that truth that makes every rereading of this book wonderful.