Reviews

Bad Girls by Alex de Campi

jula_09's review against another edition

adventurous dark fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

tangiblereads's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.0

Bad Girls is a bloody good time.  The inter mix of music and Cuban language adds an ambience to the book.  A translator would have been nice though.

geekwayne's review against another edition

4.0

'Bad Girls' by Alex de Campi and Victor Santos is a stylish graphic novel with a pretty good story to tell.

The story takes place on New Year's Eve 1958 in a nightclub in Cuba. The main characters are a group of women who work in the club. One is the girlfriend of the club owner, another is a dancer, and there is a singer. There is a visit by a mainland mobster, and a large sum of money being funneled off to the Cuban military. Through events in the story, the women decide to take the money and start a new life elsewhere. Things don't go as planned for anyone involved.

These women barely know each other at the beginning of the story, so their motivations for helping each other are tenuous at best. These are pretty flawed characters, but it's a pretty good noir story.

Driving it all is some fabulous art that reminded me of some of the great work of the late Darwyn Cooke. I loved the colors and some of the full pages. I also really liked how the music of the era intertwines with the art to provide a soundtrack to the narrative.

I received a review copy of this graphic novel from Gallery 13, Threshold, Pocket Books, and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this graphic novel.

byksie's review against another edition

dark mysterious sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.5

somethingsnappy's review against another edition

tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

captwinghead's review against another edition

1.0

Yeah... the only thing I liked about this was the art.

CW: mentions of sexual assault

Imagine my surprise when I found out this was written by a female author. So many aspects of this book included the typical elements that I hate in books men write about female characters. I enjoyed nothing about this story.

This is a noir story set during the start of the rebellion in Cuba. The story takes place mostly in a club that the lead female character, Carole, frequents.

Spoiler

Carole runs into some issues and needs to leave town quickly and that somehow means she has no other choice but to set up a black female performer to be sexually assaulted. That happens pretty early on in the story so we hate Carole from jump, basically.

That female performer is Taffy (if I followed the names right). She only gets upset with Carole briefly, which I found odd. They end up having to leave town together for attempting to kill the rapist. So, now they're trying to get money... and I was very confused as to where the money was coming from? They come up with the grift very quickly and I just didn't follow the details, to be honest.

Anyway, things go wrong, Carole ends up escaping with her baby daddy and another performer Leonella (I think). Despite Carole agreeing to take Taffy with her (you know, because she needs to leave town because of the rape Carole set up for her), Carole just agrees to take her baby daddy and leave Taffy behind. Because Carole's just the worst.

Honestly, the outcome of this book was confusing. I was rooting for no one.

Spoiler

I was actively rooting against Carole but mostly just questioning why anyone would write a story where we follow the escape attempt of a woman that set up another woman's assault? Did the author want us to cheer for her? Because I certainly did not.

90sinmyheart's review against another edition

3.0

I liked the art but had a little trouble following the story. Also unsure whether I like noir or not??

janay_shandell's review against another edition

challenging dark tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.0

knokelmaat's review against another edition

adventurous tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

This is a bit of a mixed bag for me. Drawings look good most of the time, but during tense scenes it's sometimes difficult to figure out what is happening. The story starts of decently exciting, with a lot of characters and buildup, but I felt that the story didn't really do much interesting. It was mostly just action scene after action scene without much depth to it. I like that all of it was happening during the Cuba revolution, but again the actual implementation is a bit lacking. So overall some great ideas, and good initial flow, but slightly lackluster execution. I did like the fact that almost all protagonists where women!

kaamilah28x's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? Yes

3.0