Black is for Beginnings by Laurie Faria Stolarz

Although this is the fifth book in a series, it is the first book to appear as a graphic novel. I read the first book in the series and maybe the second, but the fact I've missed books, left me relatively confused at the beginning of this story. Overall though, this one did not live up to its predecessor.

I don't want to give away too much since this book evidently follows things from the previous novels. Basically though, Stacey is unnerved over the fact that she's having dreams about her dead friend Maura, although these dreams are more just memories of happy times (why she calls them nightmares I'll never know). At the same time, she's mourning the fact that Jacob is off in Colorado and their relationship is complicated. He is also having a hard time with the relationship until they finally decide to do something about it.

The story doesn't sound and isn't half as thrilling as the other books. According to the back of the book "It's happening again...Prophetic dreams. Near-brushes with death. Killers pursing her and her friends." None of that happens. The dreams aren't nightmares, there are no killers, and the overall conflict is a bit dippy compared to the other books. She's overreacting about the dreams and basically the story is about their relationship. Also, since this book in a graphic novel, what might take one page of a typical novel, is taking 30 pages to tell (for example, the background story of how her relationship with Jacob deteriorated took 30 pages away from the story). Since this novel is only 160 pages, there's not much else to it since Stacey had her own back story to go through.

In a nutshell, this seemed like a filler novel, almost like the author just wanted to fix things with Stacey and Jacob without going too heavy into some mystery. This graphic novel had no thrill or excitement compared to the others. It definitely fell flat in my opinion.
MMK