Chasing Shadows by Swati Avasthi (review)

Corey and his twin sister, Holly, and their friend Savitri take plenty of risks in their freerunning (a kind of parkour) on the south side of Chicago, but they keep out of danger by encouraging, limiting, and protecting one another. They can’t save one another from bullets, though, and in a random shooting both Corey and Holly are hit. Holly then finds herself in a wasteland, watching her brother being led away from her with a noose around his neck by a half-man, half-snake monster. She tries to go with him, but when she hears Sav’s voice calling to her she returns to the world of the living, finding that she has been in a coma and her brother is dead. In the aftermath of the tragedy, Holly continues to be haunted by what she has seen, and Sav, trying to be a supportive friend, misses the signs that Holly may be losing her grip on reality in her grief over losing her twin. Sav and Holly alternate narration, with Holly’s chapters also including graphic narrative. Both girls love comics, and the graphic novels they have read since childhood, especially Sav’s Indian ones, give shape to Holly’s hopes and hallucinations, as does the boundary-crossing philosophy of freerunning. Phillips’ graphic insets express Holly’s anguish and her determination far more effectively than words could as she seeks to transform herself into a superhero and Sav into the goddess she was named for. The hybrid nature of the storytelling heightens the emotional impact of an already moving story that will appeal to indie kids as well as those who only freerun in their imaginations.