Thank you Netgalley and Penguin Random House Canada for the arc in return for my honest review.

The Gulf is a coming of age graphic novel that I’m sure will resonate with young adults today. Following three teens as they ditch the last day of high school to run off to live on a commune in the mid 2000s. Fed up with today’s capitalistic society, they decide they don’t want to just be another cog in the machine, where people are only deemed worthwhile as long as they are useful. The story follows them as they talk about what they want, or what they don’t want, in their lives, as they set out on the journey through the coastal B.C. forests.

I liked the story, I liked the characters, they felt  real and were very charming. I could really relate to how they were feeling about society and life after high school. The art was dynamic and engaging, although I did feel that it could have benefited from more colour than just the highlight, I think it could have really brought the environments to life. Especially with all those deep wilderness settings, with more colour, it would have just completely transformed the story for me, maybe bringing it from a 3 star to a 4 star story.

There were also a few inaccuracies in the time that just didn’t make sense, it all takes place in the early 2000s, up to 2004, however, in one scene a character says “you could be tumblr famous”, which obviously didn’t make sense seeing as Tumblr didn’t exist until 2007 and didn’t really pick up in popularity until about 2010. It was this and a few other minor things like that that could have easily been fact checked but weren’t and took me out of it a bit.

Still, I think it was well done, with characters and themes that I think many people will really connect with.