Saint Catherine by Anna Meyer
23rd St. (April 29, 2025)
Reviewed by Joshua Gage
Anna Meyer is an author, designer and comic artist living in Brooklyn, New York. Originally from the Midwest, Anna went to a two-year design school in Lakewood, Ohio, where she received her associate degree in graphic design. She has over eleven years of professional design experience as both a senior designer and a design manager. She has been drawing and making comics ever since she could hold a pencil. Anna’s debut graphic novel is Saint Catherine.
Saint Catherine focuses on Catherine, a 20-something woman who is caught up in the world of urban living. While she juggles friendships, life, work, relationships, and more, her certainty, her one faith, is that if she skips mass, something bad will happen to her. When she finally does skip mass for the first time, she is possessed by a demon. Not a guilt or shame demon, but a real-life, black oil slick of a demon that haunts her day and night.
Saint Catherine is an interesting novel. It very much reads like a coming-of-age story, but the fears involved with maturing and living on one’s own, separating oneself from one’s family and traditions, and simply wrestling with the complexities of the world are turned into actual horrors. While the demon may or may not be metaphorical, for our protagonist, it is quite real, quite visceral, and does quite a lot of damage to her life before she’s able to come to terms with it.
While this is certainly a graphic novel that adults will want to read, older YA audiences might find something here as well, so this could absolutely be a good intro novel into demon horror. There’s nothing too horrific that will scare audiences, but the demon is problematic and threatening, so the tension and fear are still high. Furthermore, anyone with a conservative religious background will be able to identify with the character and her internal struggles. This is a really strong debut graphic novel, and Meyer is a new author to keep an eye out for.
