Fool's Gold: A review

For my first post of the new year I thought I would try something different and try to write out a review for one of the books I have really enjoyed. I didn't really set out with any master plan but I just finished re-reading Fool's Gold by Amy Reeder Hadley and thought it would be fun to write up a review of it and hopefully get a couple of people to check it. But, before we get to the book itself I should probably give you my faithful readers a little bit of background on how I came to be in possession of this fine book. Last year I went to Comic Fest (for the first time) here in colorful Colorado and while I was there one of the the writer/artists I met was the creator of this tome, Amy Reeder Hadley. It was pretty cool, though I must confess I wasn't all that familiar with her work before meeting her and really the thing that really piqued my interest in her work was that she had her sketch book open for folks to come by and check out and when I got up to her table it was opened to some of the Sailor Moon sketches she had done and in high school I was a huge Sailor Moon fan, no matter which channel it moved to or what time it aired (even when it started airing here at 6 a.m.) I always tuned in and would be totally bummed if I missed an episode. So, back to the story I flipped through her Sailor Moon drawings and remarked on how much I used to love that series and after chatting for awhile I decided I needed to get some of her work, so I picked out a copy of the first book of her Fool's Gold series and she was nice enough to sign it and draw a neat little sketch for me in the inside cover. So, these facts along with her being a native Coloradan like myself made it extremely hard for me not to like this book upon my first reading of it and if you ever get the chance to meet her Amy Reeder Hadley is a total sweetheart. As you could probably tell by reading this so far I was quite biased in my first reading of this story. Well, since that time (nearly a year since then) a lot of things have gone on in my life some good, some bad, some completely awesome and some completely terrible and the other night as I was getting ready for bed and trying to find something to read before dozing off I figured I go with this story, and boy am I glad I did. Now I'm not really the target audience for this book seeing how I'm a 30 year old hetero male, rather than a teenage girl which is definitely the target audience of this manga. However, even through this second reading I still enjoyed the story quite a lot if not more. If you haven't read the story and I encourage you all to check it out. The story starts off with the main character Penny a fledgling fashion designer who is starting her sophomore year of high school and dealing with her best friend Katie dating a complete jerk whom cheats on her and how Penny keeps trying to get Katie to leave this tool. While reading about pyrite for her Geology class she stumbles upon a classification for the jerks she sees Katie and all the other girls in school fall for and it's during this Geology class the teacher asks for a volunteer to head up the Geology club. This gives Penny the idea to use the cover of the Geology club to get the girls of her school to stop chasing the jerks and look for nice guys to date. Now as a nice guy (and I'm not just that I have references)I enjoyed the idea of girls seeing through the slickness of the douchebags they usually go for(or atleast, did in high school)and seeking out the nice guys in school. Another thing I really loved about this story were the outfits Penny wears,she designs and makes all her own clothes and some of the designs Amy comes up with for the character are just so cool. Plus it doesn't hurt that she mostly wears dresses and if there is one thing I love more than anything else it is seeing a girl in a dress and speaking of the clothes the costumes Mrs. Hadley draws for the school Halloween dance, are just awesome. This story has just gotten better since I've read it again and after reading it the first time I went out and got a copy of Madame Xanadu which Mrs. Hadley also did the artwork for and the issue I picked up by sheer coincidence happened to be the last issue with Amy Hadley doing the artwork on before a new team took over the book. Well, I don't know if this is the best review you'll read for this book. But, I just wanted to share with you fine folks out there on the Internets and Interwebs how much I truly enjoyed reading this book and hopefully turning some of you on to Amy Reeder Hadley's talents as a writer and artist. Plus, I think I may have promised a little more in depth talk on this subject in my posts way back when I first commented on here about the fun time I had at Comic Fest all those months ago.