I really enjoyed this!! It’s a refreshing take on the coming-of-age genre, and totally a love letter to underground punk scenes. The exaggerated, sometimes messy art style added a lot of character and grunge. (Not sure if anyone on here has heard of Instagram artist d33d33draws, but the zine comic-adjacent style, as well as the focus on the intersections of queerness and Blackness, kind of remind me of her stuff!! Even though, yes, I know her and Bianca Xunise are two completely different artists.) I haven’t seen this many alternative characters in a graphic novel before, their designs were really awesome, and I also appreciated having a story that had LGBTQ and Black (and brown!) voices at the forefront. (That isn’t just shown in the main characters’ designs but in some of the Baby Hares struggles to get recognized, too. And there’s still some somewhat short, but important discussion on how frequently Black femmes get their work stolen.) 

In general, though, the characters were very fun. The Baby Hares’ back-and-forth whenever they’d go to gigs together or hang out felt pretty true to that 18-19 age range.
The other characters were also entertaining, even those who appeared for very briefly had a lot of personality. 

Also, the soundtrack included LITERALLY ON THE PAGES?? That was so cool! There was literally a punk or goth song chosen for different chapters depending on what was happening with the characters and story. I’m more familiar with goth than punk music, so those were what I recognized more, but I’m interested in finding out the nuances to the tone (and maybe even bits of music history??) that were brought into the narrative.

And, on a slightly different branch of the soundtrack topic, this is one of the only times I haven’t minded seeing lyrics created for an in-universe band! They amplified the angst and anger of the main characters, Ariel especially, in the best way possible. The scenes of Baby Hares collaborating to make their songs were also super fun to read. 

I really liked the characters themselves, too. They were messy but all of their problems felt very real, especially in the kind of awkward time frame between highschool and college. Some of the ways the main trio would end up arguing would annoy me sometimes, tbh, but that kind of conflict and misunderstanding is pretty common in teens/young adults, and because of the bond they have with each other, it wasn’t something that broke their friendship. 

(Also, I’ll admit that I spotted Clyde’s red flags pretty quickly, but that’s probably because I’m an outsider and not someone in Ariel’s shoes.)

The only reason this isn’t 5 stars is because the ending was a little ridiculous, and there was a line or two that didn’t sit right with me (…Ariel being embarrassed by their mom, and saying “I’m disassociating” as a little one-liner thing☠️). But. I’m surprised this isn’t talked about very much? I can’t even remember where I first discovered it on booksta but it was in literally just one post. Might’ve even just been something by the author?? My point is, this was too charming and creative of a graphic novel for this to slip under the radar.