Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
Best friends Samantha and Jade love to swim, surf, and solve mysteries in their free time. In “Surfside Girls” Volume One by Kim Dwinell, the two friends discover a whole new world of friendly ghosts, helping to save their favorite surfing beach, Danger Point, from being turned into a touristy resort. Titled “Surfside Girls – The Mystery at the Old Rancho,” Volume Two of this middle-grade graphic novel series begins with Samantha training as a junior lifeguard to monitor the beach for an upcoming surf competition. However, she runs off to Danger Point to hang out with Jade and their new ghostly friends, sparking a new mystery.
Similar to Volume One, the artwork by Kim Dwinell is breezy, sunny, and easy on the eyes, offering readers a slice of beautiful beach summers wherever they are. Despite the numerous ghosts in this issue, it’s easy to differentiate them due to distinct color variations—the supernatural beings are all white-blue, while regular humans are in varied hues. When a ghost speaks, their entire bubble is in blue, creating an interesting clash of colors on many pages.
While the plot in Volume Two is intriguing, it’s also somewhat far-fetched. Samantha and Jade crack an almost two-hundred-year-old case when they meet a ghost named Maria, who claims she saw her father on the beach. The catch is, Maria was dead in the 1800s, so it couldn’t have been her dad, who she claims disappeared in the 1820s. The girls think it might be a direct descendant of Maria’s family, who used to own the old rancho by the beach, now a historical site with her family home converted into a museum.
Apart from a somewhat silly subplot about Samantha’s crush on her ghost friend Robert (reminiscent of Casper and Kat from the 1995 film “Casper”), which wasn’t very amusing, ‘Surfside Girls Volume 2’ is a fun read about two friends going to great lengths to trace Maria’s family history and the possible connection between her and the man she insists looks exactly like her father.
From sneaking into the rancho museum late at night to going all the way to another town for research, the adventurous spirit of the girls is a joy to read about. Pick up this volume if you enjoyed the first one.
Rating: 4 out of 5.
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