What Makes Girls Sick and Tired is a short, illustrated collection of reasons why feminism is so necessary, and why women are exhausted in this world we live in. It's a great collection that raises plenty of valid points, and I genuinely adored how diverse and intersectional it is; the author and illustrator are both cis white women, and they acknowledge their privileges in this sense, but the book itself focuses frequently on the specific experiences of women of color, indigenous women, queer women, trans women, fat women, and more.

While there is a lot of positive stuff to be said about this little book, I also have to point out the reasons this isn't getting a 5-star review from me:
1. I try never to say art in a graphic novel or illustrated book is bad, because it's all so subjective and I know the illustrator tried hard, but I very strongly dislike this illustration style.

2. There's hardly any mention of women who don't fit the "thin, able-bodied" appearance (regardless of skin color, sexuality, or gender identity)—just one quick panel about how fat women are less likely to be hired, which barely scratches the surface of what life is like for any woman above what society considers her "ideal weight". If the author wanted to be as intersectional as possible and make everyone feel included, as her author's note implies at the end, there should have been a lot more representation of women who don't fit the thin, able-bodied cliches.

3. I can't tell who this book is marketed for. While some of what is discussed feels a little over the heads of the average preteen, much of the phrasing feels very childish and gimmicky to me in the way that a children's book would, so I literally can't begin to guess what age range this book was intended for.

4. Finally, there are just so many missed opportunities here. There's no real talk about how women in politics are treated, or how hard it is for women to get proper healthcare, or how women's mental illness symptoms are so frequently overlooked or misdiagnosed, or how women of color get paid even less than white women, or how painfully high the statistics are for trans women being murdered... the list goes on, really. There are just tons of huge issues that could have been discussed if this book had been a little longer or hadn't taken up 95% of each page's space with generic illustrations.

I guess my final word is that I genuinely do appreciate what the author and illustrator tried to do here, but I think they fell very short from the mark and there are a lot of other, similar books that do a much better job than this.

Thank you so much to Second Story Press for providing me with this ARC in exchange for an honest review!