Do you ever read something and say to yourself, "oh, this was extremely written and drawn by men." This book has it all, including a sequence of pages focused on the all important question: should a 13 year old girl completely change her appearance in order to be more sexy? Remember, it's best if this sexiness is imposed on her by a male relative without her consent. There's also a panel where the foreground is completely taken up by one characters breasts and the mid-ground is focused on a teenage girl in a bikini.
LISTEN, I really wanted to like this book, and I did like parts of it! But there was so much in here that was just so off-putting that I finished the book feeling frustrated and upset. And I realize that this blog has kinda become a (very sporadic) negative review blog in that last while and that's not my intention for it! I want to like the things I read! Anyways there's a LOT of spoilers ahead.
So, this book, ostensibly about Sabrina, opens with a prologue focused on her father in which he betrays and then attacks her mother, while taking Sabrina as his possession. Sabrina's whole family and community knows that her mother is a) alive, and b) incapacitated and institutionalized by her father, but they all tell her that her mother is dead. So we begin Sabrina's life with control being exerted over her and those around her by her father. Skipping forward, Sabrina's father has been somehow encased in a tree, and Sabrina is a 13 year old going to public school for the first time. She's getting ready for school when her cousin comes in and says she needs to be more sexy, and casts a couple of glamours on her while she says "don't cast a glamour on me". While at school she sees a football player and is like "wow, I love him, and I hate the girl who also likes him and said 'he's mine', also both of us are fully developed even though we are, again, 13" Upon returning home from school Sabrina displays one of her few moments of agency-exercising by, you guessed it, taking agency away from someone else by casting a spell on Harvey to make him like her!
I realize I'm just typing out a cynical synopsis but I'm so annoyed with this book! It could have been so good!
Once again, I'd like to remind everyone that this book is ostensibly About Sabrina. So Betty and Veronica are witches now and they raise Madam Satan from the dead (she killed herself so OF COURSE she was sent to, and this is a direct quote, "that particular circle of hell reserved for suicides" WOW! I HATE IT!). Madam Satan threw herself to hungry lions, literally, because Edward Spellman aka Sabrina's father said he wanted to marry a mortal woman instead of her. This is the same mortal woman, remember, who was violently and brutally attacked by Edward earlier in the book. Madam Satan goes to the place where Diana (Sabrina's mother) is institutionalized, tells her her story, and then decides to - instead of helping her - give her "clarity" and thereby subject her to further pain and torture at the hands of doctors and nurses!
Here's something I really hate: when books pit all of their female characters against each other, especially women hating each other because a man chose one of them over the other one. The man caused this problem! Not the woman! Rosalind and Sabrina hate each other because hey both liked Harvey. Madam Satan curses Diana because they both liked Edward.
Meanwhile, Sabrina is now dating Harvey and he is pressuring her for sex. She asks her aunts if she can have sex and they say "no, you have to be pure for satan", and she doesn't question that at all. Madam Satan, by now disguised as a teacher, uses her breasts (I am not kidding) to distract Harvey (the 16 year old boy) from his football game and then says "oops, sorry for distracting you, by the way isn't it just too bad that Sabrina runs off into the woods at night, probably for sex with randos?" Which of course makes Harvey angry so he runs into the woods to find and rebuke Sabrina. Sabrina is, of course, going to her "dark baptism" in the woods which is a big ceremony where it's implied she is going to have sex with satan?
In The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina the netflix tv show, Sabrina decides, of her of volition, to not go through with her dark baptism and accepts the consequences. It's a good moment! In The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina the comic book I'm currently writing about, Sabrina's dark baptism is interrupted by Harvey and he stops it, and then is killed and eaten by the witches who were there while some other witches scream at Sabrina that she is so horrible for ruining the dark baptism (because of someone else's actions that she has no control over?). Now Madam Satan, who manipulated Harvey into trying to find Sabrina, goes to manipulate Sabrina into raising Harvey from the dead.
The two times in this book that Sabrina shows an interest in furthering her skills in spell crafting and casting are both times when she wants to make Harvey do something. Oh yeah and after Harvey died his mom gives a ring to Sabrina and was like "he was going to propose, isn't that beautiful" and I was like "they're??? 16????? He only liked her??? because of a spell???"
So Madam Satan gets Betty and Veronica to come and help Sabrina get through a trial and then the four of them reconvene to raise Harvey from the dead but SURPRISE Madam Satan ACTUALLY released Edward's spirit from the tree it was encased in and put it into Harvey's body. So! Harvey/Edward goes back to Harvey's parent's house where Harvey's mother murders his father because he's like "Harvey is dead and I have a bad feeling about whoever is knocking on the door" and then Harvey/Edward is like "Harvey isn't here anymore" and then ties her up and phones Sabrina (HIS DAUGHTER) and says "I'm back". End book!
So! We begin with Edward controlling, attacking, and lying to women and we end with Edward controlling, attacking, and lying to women! This book, once again, ostensibly about Sabrina, focuses way way more on Harvey and Edward, with the women in their lives acting as a backdrop. Once again, there is SO MUCH this book could've done and/or talked about, and it just, didn't.
I also know that other people really liked this book and I am so curious about your opinions!! Did I read this book entirely wrong????? Did I miss something??? Honestly I would like to have missed something!!
