Book Review: Magic Mutant Nightmare Girl by Erin Grammar

Have you ever seen a book cover and title that’s more me?

Have you ever seen a book cover and title that’s more me?

I’m someone who has been into anime and manga for years, including magical girls. I’m totally in love with Harajuku fashion; especially lolita and if you couldn’t tell from my review of Cute Mutants volume 1, I’m clearly after more queer YA where the characters have powers.

This book was clearly made for me, and I’m so damn excited that I managed to get an e-arc from the author to review. I read this book in a single night as I couldn’t put it down.

This story focuses on Holly Roads, an eighteen-year-old girl living alone with an obsession with lolita fashion and the money to be able to buy it. On her way home from a birthday meal, she winds up running into two mutants, and the fight that follows leads her to develop a super strength of her own. Her newfound abilities mean she winds helping a group known as the N.E.R.D.S. They need to try and track down those guys that she fought. One of the guys is incredibly attractive, unfortunately, he’s also a bit of an ass.

If you’re looking for something super easy and fun to read, then this is definitely a book for you. It is pretty short – less than 300 pages – which does help with the reading speed. But it is just enjoyable in general. If you love lolita fashion, then the clothing mentions are just going to make you want to look up the specific dresses, which is just kind of exciting. And made me want to buy more clothes. Unfortunately, I don’t have the money, and it’s hard to find things that fit me. Alas, I still loved seeing all about the clothes. I was just a little bitter that it was so easy for her to have a wardrobe full of Angelic Pretty clothes and I’m just sat there dreaming of it.

As the main character, Holly wasn’t bad. She could be a little annoying, but I get that a lot of it is down to her anxiety. Her wardrobe matters so much to her as it’s her armour and she definitely overthinks things a lot. I could see aspects of myself as a teenager in her even if I wouldn’t behave exactly that way now. I still definitely overthink whether anyone actually wants to spend time with me, ha!

Out of the other characters, I was definitely most curious about Nunez, Chi Ho and Kyle. I didn’t think much of Brannon, but I’m hoping he’ll grow on me. I think he’s just a little guarded to start with. Nunez is sweet, but I do have to add that his story is a bit of a Latinx stereotype. His past is tied with drugs and cartels. I’ve seen a few people comment on this but no one Latinx yet. So it is possibly something questionable, but I did like how he got himself out of that situation. It was pretty awesome and clever. Just bear in mind that this might be a slight issue.

There wasn’t much on the romance front yet. You can tell who likes who and I like that it’s the bi MC with an ace love interest. That’s pretty nice to see. I love that we’re getting more diverse romances and hopefully we’ll get some fun side character ships in the next two books. It was a little weird that she just assumed Brannon was queer because of a tattoo but at least she wasn’t acting like a straight girl being all weird about a gay guy. We don’t need more of that in the world.

Also, that ending. Like. What a cliffhanger. I need to know what happens next now. Where is she going to go? What’s going to happen to her fashion? Will we get to see more loli styles in the later books? I wanna see some hime loli representation, some more ouji style and wa loli would be fun. If you don’t know what I mean by any of those, Ouji is in the book’s glossary. Google the rest. You won’t regret it.

This book was just so much fun and I absolutely adored it.

5/5 Stars

CONTENT WARNINGS: Grief, depression, parental death, anxiety (especially thought spirals and overthinking), bullying/harassment, mild gore and medical body horror, mention of violence-related PTSD, brief underage drinking, mention of drug use

Amazon UK | Bookshop Org