Arc Review: Mooncakes by Suzanne Walker & Wendy Xu 💕 Witches and Found Family

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CW’s: mentions of abusive parents, captivity, grief

Representation 🌷 Queer Chinese American MC’s – one is hard of hearing, the other nonbinary (they/them pronouns)

A story of love and demons, family and witchcraft.

Nova Huang knows more about magic than your average teen witch. She works at her grandmothers’ bookshop, where she helps them loan out spell books and investigate any supernatural occurrences in their New England town.

One fateful night, she follows reports of a white wolf into the woods, and she comes across the unexpected: her childhood crush, Tam Lang, battling a horse demon in the woods. As a werewolf, Tam has been wandering from place to place for years, unable to call any town home.

Pursued by dark forces eager to claim the magic of wolves and out of options, Tam turns to Nova for help. Their latent feelings are rekindled against the backdrop of witchcraft, untested magic, occult rituals, and family ties both new and old in this enchanting tale of self-discovery.

Arc Review

Thank you to Lion Forge and Netgalley for providing me with a digital Arc in exchange for an honest Review! 

💖 “Mooncakes was such a heartwarming story full of found family, strong friendships, witchcraft, werewolves and a cute friends to lovers couple that stole my heart” 💖

Mooncakes can be described in one word: heartwarming. Don’t get me wrong, the book deals with a few heavy topics such as recovering from losing a loved one and running away from abusive parents, but it was such a positive force as well. I flew through the graphic novel and would still consider it a great comfort read because there were so many loving dynamics in the story. Here is a quick list of things that I really liked about the graphic novel and that you could end up enjoying it as well!

• The art style is SO cute!! I wasn’t sure if I was allowed to include a sample page, but just the cover gives off the vibe of the graphic novel: aesthetic, very atmospheric and very cute. Exactly what spoke to me.
• I loved how the book explored the two main characters. Both characters are Chinese American (and in love). Nova is a hard of hearing witch and dealing with the loss of her parents and figuring out where she belongs as a witch. Tam is a nonbinary werewolf running away from an abusive household and coming to terms with who they are.
• The romance was adorable. Tam and Nova are very cute together, they used to be friends before Tam went away and now that they’re both reunited, we see how much they meant to one another. There’s a lot of respect and caring between them, it’s just plain adorable. They’ll quite literally melt your heart.
• Found family!! Tam is basically adopted into Nova’s family and gets a lot of support from Nova’s two grandmothers! In general, there is lots of family love, because Nova has such a close bond to her grandma’s, as she lives with them since her parents died. Her grandmother’s also kick ass, they are super cool, I love them!
• I was also a big fan of Nova’s best friend Tatyana becoming part of things later on. She could have been a bit better integrated into the story, but I like the unlikely friendship that we got to see.
• WITCHES! I love witches in books, so seeing the witchcraft and a rogue horse demon on the loose was a super interesting premise to read about. I also liked that Tam being a werewolf was connected to magic as ‘wolf magic’ that was a nice original twist on the species.

In the end: Mooncakes could have made for a fantastic graphic novels Series. Sadly, that wasn’t the case, so I was a bit disappointed that we only got this one story. It could have had a less predictable and more complex storyline that better connected internal and external conflict if we would have gotten a bigger amount of page time with these characters. That’s why I ended up giving the book 4 stars! ⭐

Are you going to read Sorcery of Thorns? What is your favorite book with magicians? 💖

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