The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is the most famous ghost story for this time of year. Washington Irving’s classic ghost story has been adapted into many formats and of one of the most beloved adaptions is the Disney short.
And there have also been takes on this story that focus on the descendants of the characters from the original story and we are now starting to see LGBTQ takes on this story such as with the musical, TarryTown.
All of these elements seem as though they should add up to an interesting story as there is a lot that could be done with a new fleshed-out take on Sleepy Hollow but then I read the book for today’s review and to say I was let down would be an understatement.
Author
Serena Valentino
This is where I knew the book was in trouble, Serena Valentino is my least favorite author working on Disney books, none of the books I’ve read by her have been any good and have always left me angry or confused at what she was trying to get at. This is seen with her Villains series which are supposed to focus on the origins of classic Disney Villains but over time, her original characters The Odd Sisters overtook the books. This is why I prefer the Twisted Tale series as they know what they are meant to focus on.
But no, Valentino just couldn’t help herself even though this book was not part of her Villains series, she fell into usual cliches such as taking characters that can be viewed as misguided but good and turning them into villains, she pulled this with Triton in her Ursula book and did the same with Ichabod Crane in this book. I am not saying she’s not a fan of these characters as far be it from me to claim someone isn’t a fan but I don’t think she understands why people like these characters. Another sticking point is that this book features an LGTBQ romance between the descendants of Katrina Van Tassel and Ichabod Crane, it’s a wlw romance but the problem is, it’s never properly fleshed out and there is nothing about the romance that makes it interesting or you want to root for them. To compare this to another Disney Halloween book sequel, the Hocus Pocus book sequel featured a lesbian romance between the daughter of Max and Alison from the original movie, Poppy, and her crush Isabella who is revealed to be a witch but even before all of this, you root for the couple to get together as they feel real and flawed as the book takes the time to show the ups and downs of their relationship while trying to stop the Sanderson Sisters.
In the acknowledgments section, Valentino says that she was inspired by Anne Rice and I can understand that as Rice’s books featured plenty of LGBTQ romance, look no further than Louis and Lestat but I think she didn’t understand Rice’s characters even if vampires felt real because they were allowed to be flawed and messy. There is none of that with the couple in this book, they feel so stock and get over their issues quickly. Also, the way she writes the main girl’s ex-boyfriend trying to make fun of her for being into girls and dating the weird girl feels like it was written for an elementary-grade book when this is meant to be a YA book. That’s another thing, this book claims to be for Young Adult audiences but I don’t see how anyone in that demographic would get anything out of this book as the writing is less than subtle. Two examples come to mind, Kat the descendant of Katrina Van Tassel is being gaslit by her ex-boyfriend and it’s spelled out for the audience and the definition is provided and this is after a conservation of the movie Gaslight is held.
For those unaware, this movie is labeled as contributing to coining the term gaslit, so an allusion to the movie and letting the reader put two and two together would have been a better way to get this across. Though this is not the most egregious example, you see this book is split into a past and present section with the past being two hundred years ago and focusing on Katrina’s diary and how she met Ichabod Crane. Well, Katrina’s father calls Crane, Mr. Crow to annoy him and in the present, Kat’s love interest is going by Isadora Crow, which spoils what is meant to be a big reveal that Isadora is a Crane.
Let’s go back to the diary aspect for a moment, when you think of a diary, you’re first thought is someone writing down their thoughts and those are usually presented in a first-person point of view as again, it is what they are thinking.
Not here though, oh sure they start that way but all of the diary chapters are written in standard third-person POV and as though it’s being told by an omniscient narrator, even though those chapters are listed as coming from The Diary of Katrina Van Tassel. If these chapters are meant to be from Katrina’s diary, why aren’t they presented as her thoughts and feelings? Also, I have nowhere else to put this but late in the book, when Kat, the present-day protagonist returns to her school, Ichabod Crane High (Yes really), she is sent to her Headmaster’s office by his assistant Angus and the Headmaster is Toad and this is about her missing I think an English exam for Professor Cyril.
Why reference Wind in The Willows with the blatant name drops? It’s just so jarring and makes no sense to include a Wind in the Willows reference in a Sleepy Hollow book aside from the fact that both short films were released as a package film, The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad.
Aside from these two short films being released together, they share nothing in common. This isn’t me complaining about the names as I can take silly names, I’m an OUAT fan after all and some of the Storybrook names were silly. My issue is that there was no need for these extremely minor characters to be named after Mr. Toad and his friends. What is the superintendent named after Winkie? It’s just so dumb and easily takes the reader out of the book seeing this.
Cover
The one good thing I can give this book is the cover, a hand holding up a Jack-O’lantern with green flames coming out of them and the eyes being the wlw couple from the book. This honestly looks cool and perhaps I was pulled in by the cover hoping that what was inside the book would live up to the cover but this is a case where the cover is better than the book.
The Plot
First off, even though this book is named after The Horseman the book seems to forget about him at times and he doesn’t show up until page 204 in this book which is just under 300 pages. Naming it after The Horseman is a way to draw in Sleepy Hollow fans when a more honest title would have been something along the lines of The Ghost of Katrina Van Tassel. I’ll get to that in a moment but Katrina’s ghost plays a larger part in this book than The Horseman. This book opens up by saying this story is not about Ichabod Crane but rather about Katrina Van Tassel and her lineage. I can see what the book is going for as it seems to want to have a feminist angle but it undermines itself there so quickly. Let’s start with how the Van Tassels in the modern day are treated as Sleepy Hollow royalty for being related to the first Katrina and Kat’s mother and father expect her to marry her jerk of a boyfriend Blake and he’ll take over the farm and she’ll stay and be his wife working in the kitchen. This book came out in 2022, who thinks like that nowadays? Yeah, I know old-fashioned families exist but this just felt so unbelievable, and the fact that every woman in Kat’s family is named Katrina and goes by a different variation is just another huh?
This also ties into her relationship with Isadora who she falls for way too fast and when her mother first hears the name, she is concerned as she believes Isadora to be a Crane and she is right at that moment, when Kat learns the truth she is rightly hurt as the girl she loves has been hiding something huge from her. Don’t worry they work things out and get back together and not three chapters after her mother being upset that another Crane has come to Sleepy Hollow, she’s happy to see Isadora be with Kat. Consistency, have you heard of it? Oh, and it turns out that the ghost of Katrina has been following Kat as a ghost trying to warn and protect her from her ex, Blake and he is possessed by Ichabod. We will get to that in the section focusing on Katrina but yeah, I don’t like what they did to Ichabod. Oh and here’s the biggest shocker, you know how it’s long been speculated that Brom was the one to scare Ichabod away by pretending to be The Headless Horseman, not here, it was Katrina.
Yeah, I don’t buy that for a minute. Now let’s talk about the Katrina section, this part is worse in my opinion, do what you want with the original characters but with the classic characters, Valentino shows she doesn’t understand them. Let’s start with the diary entries only exist to justify why Katrina married Brom in the end even though at the end of the short she was all over him at their wedding, so there was no justification needed.
And she turned Katrina into Belle and no I am not joking, Katrina is an avid reader who wants to escape Sleepy Hollow, or to put it another way, she wants more than this provincial life. The Katrina sections come across as though Belle decided Gaston wasn’t that bad after all and settled for him. Even when all book Katrina talks about how she has fallen out of love with Brom as they’ve been together since they were kids and she doesn’t love him that any longer. Welp, she changes her mind in the end and so much for leaving Sleepy Hollow as she never ventured outside the city after marrying Brom even though that was her dream. I guess she’s okay with not having the life she wanted if it makes everyone around her but her happy. And I mentioned Ichabod up top, well to prop up this new story, Valentino decided to make Ichabod a villain. Which I can see what Valentino was going for as Crane does have some rather unscrupulous thoughts about getting the farm her father owns in the original short but there still does seem to be a bit of affection for Katrina in the original short. Valentino exaggerated the worst attributes of Ichabod to make Brom look like the better choice.
Katrina has genuine feelings for Ichabod but he does not and only wants to get with her to better his position in the town. This is meant to parallel Kat and Blake’s relationship and how Kat realizes Blake has been mistreating her by seeing Katrina being treated the same way by Ichabod. Just what? This also ties back into how the book wants to make Katrina more of a fleshed-out character but all they did was steal Belle’s personality without understanding the character they’re meant to be focusing on or the character they lifted from. Ichabod is so much of a villain that he even has a mawhah laugh after revealing he doesn’t plan on honoring Katrina’s wishes of leaving Sleepy Hollow and keep her locked down in the town. And this is where Brom decides he must protect Katrina from Ichabod. Taking this further this is why Ichabod is the most hated man in Sleepy Hollow history and why the the town is wary of newcomers like Isadora. I think it would have been more interesting to learn their fears were unjustified and that Ichabod wasn’t a bad guy but by making him a villain, it double downs on their beliefs instead of challenging what they know.
Nice job removing the agency of your lead female character book as she doesn’t get so much of a say in what happens. Oh sure, she says it was her choice to marry Brom and stay in Sleepy Hollow but I don’t buy it for a moment when what the character wants doesn’t align with what we learn of her at the end of the book. This is something that greatly bugs me the more I think about it, if the idea is to give Katrina more character and agency why not say she left Sleepy Hollow to travel and married someone that wasn’t Ichabod or Brom and they moved back to Sleepy Hollow after a couple of years. Think of it this way, history is written by the winner and usually built upon lies the winner uses to make themselves look better until the truth is revealed. Think Confederate statutes and how the current generation is trying to get rid of them as they represent vile men.
This book had a great opportunity with Katrina’s diary to reveal the truth of Sleepy Hollow’s past and to interrogate the lies the town was built upon but no, it instead reaffirms everything these people believe. Ichabod is the most hated man in the town’s history and this book shows why that is and makes Brom out to be a town hero. Again, Gaston and I know Brom was an inspiration for Gaston when that movie was being made but this didn’t need to come full circle or if you are going to do this, don’t go half-measure.
My Final Thoughts
To say this book is bad is to undersell it, while this claims to be a Sleepy Hollow book, it doesn’t feel like one and the new characters are so boring and the present-day story while the story set in the past following Katrina is infuriating as a Twitter friend of mine pointed out, Katrina did have a personality, she was a flirt and liked boys but this Katrina is just Belle and a poor man’s version of Belle. Emma Watson was a better take on this archetype as Belle than this character. The title is a lie as The Headless Horseman barely factors into the plot. Well, let’s put this wet fart of a book behind us. Join me next time as I look at something from the world of Arendelle as I head into the…
Forest of Shadows
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