The main thing this graphic novel has going for it is the art. It's pretty decent, with some great color palette work.

The story itself made no sense, had no internal logic, didn't even try to have a cohesive storyline, and jumped all over the place. I have no idea of how or WHY anything happened in this book.

I'm finding it a little difficult to review this, because while I think the message it imparts is well intentioned, the execution didn't quite work for me. 

Slip is the story of Jade, a ceramic artist who goes to a month-long art summer camp at the same time that she gets the news that her best friend Phoebe has attempted suicide. Jade struggles with her art and her feelings about Phoebe's attempt during her time at the camp, while also connecting with Mary, another student. As she tries to process everything she's feeling, some of her art comes to life and she has to figure out why and what it means.

All of these elements each element is a good idea on its own, but not all of them land. I liked the story of Jade struggling with her art and her insecurities related to that; the art process, the critiques, figuring out what her art is about, that was lovely and was a good reflection of the internal struggles she was dealing with. Her art coming to life was just plain weird, and I don't think the metaphor there really worked. Part of that is the art itself in this book - while it's pretty decent, I think having it be monochromatic did this a pretty big disservice. The change from greys to reds when anything had to do with Phoebe was meaningful, but everything else felt so flat.

The romance was okay, but I didn't really care much about it because, like a lot of the book, Mary as a character felt flat. All I knew about her was that she made art and had cool art ideas. 

Again, I think the main strength in this graphic novel was Jade dealing with the development of her art. That was really interesting to read, and the critiques and process of making her art as metaphor for her internal struggle was very solid and made me feel for her as a character. 

Overall, I think this is a decent graphic novel, with some great ideas that unfortunately don't pan out. However, I think both the author and the artist have some promise and if I come across their works in the future, I'll check them out.

A weird and interesting novella, with various cool elements - angels and demons, steampunk, a wild west feel - that come together to make a pretty okay story. I think I needed this to be longer to really care about literally anyone in this story.

A story about the complexity of language and family and love, Trung Le Nguyen's writing and art come together to create something lovely and moving.

Tiến is young and gay, and trying to figure out how to come out to his parents. What I loved most about this story was that while Tiến struggles with how to come out, there is only minor homophobic content, and it's a part of the story, not the whole of it. Tiến has friends who love and accept him, and he knows who he is - it's more his worries about his parents accepting him that drive his fear.

The story also focuses on Tiến's mother, who fled Vietnam when she was young. There is a lot of love and care in this family, and she and Tiến's shared love for fairy tales is where I think this graphic novel really shines. The fairy tales they read to each other also get illustrated and written out, interspersed between Tien's story and his mother's story. I especially loved the story of Tấm and Cám, a Vietnamese fairy tale that shares similarities with Cinderella. The Little Mermaid tale in here too was lovely. 

The art in this was quite stunning. While it first appeared to be simple line work, the combination of the clean lines and color choices helped separate each section of the story - Tiến & current day, his mother's life/flashbacks, the fairytales - while still using the same muted tones to tie everything together thematically.

This was truly just lovely. 100% recommended for any reader, but especially tweens and teens who could benefit from seeing a coming out story that is built on a foundation of love.

I love the idea of this, and really enjoyed the ways that Moriarty went about getting back at the upper crust, stratified social structure. However, the writing itself felt very one-note and clunky at times. I suppose because this is a first volume and it's setting up the story as a whole, everything had to be spelled out, but there were many times that I wanted more subtlety.

While the art feels limited because of the one-note story telling, it's pretty damn good.

As commentary on the lives and bodies of black women and girls, this book strikes home with surgical precision. As a mystery thriller with some supernatural horror underpinnings, it didn't quite hit the mark.

I never quite found myself liking Liz as a character, and as she became more and more like thriller main characters I really dislike reading about (has deep trauma that she always runs from, often self-medicates with alcohol or drugs, investigates in a way that has people disbelieving them or thinking they did it because of how much of a mess they are at life and/or investigating) I found it harder to enjoy the mystery aspect of the story itself.

This book was strongest in the chapters that followed the missing and murdered girls. Adams was at her best when writing these vignettes, focusing on flashes of their lives as both young girls and young black girls. 

For a debut, this felt messy in places but also incredibly strong. I'll absolutely be keeping an eye out for what she has coming up next.

Could have be an interesting idea, but this essentially boils down to a very boring father searching for his son storyline. Also, this kid was INCREDIBLY annoying.

I borrowed this from my library on a whim, picked it out of the 10 audiobooks I currently have borrowed in my Libby app on a whim, and I'm so glad I did.

I am not the target audience. My desire to read novels about middle school bullying is practically non-existent. But, Jennifer Chan is Not Alone presents an interesting framework for the bullying: Jennifer Chan believed in aliens, and when she runs away, our main character Mal thinks that maybe she finally contacted them. Or got abducted. So she tries to find her, driven by her own guilt and fear. 

This novel is so painfully true to the pre-teen strangeness, fear, and desire to figure out where you fit in the world. It clearly involves a storyline about bullying, but I think approached it in a way that shows how and why bullying can happen on many levels. It shows the various effects that bullying can have on people. It shows girls doing their best to fit in, or not. It shows the growing pains of learning that the world is not small like it used to be, but huge and vast and though we are tiny beings in a big universe, we can still have monumental effects on those around us with our words and our actions.

I would highly, highly recommend this for its target age group. It's written deftly, it has a plot that pulls you along with the desire to find out what happened and why, and it weaves in pretty deep themes in a way that is easy to take in and process.

This was an incredibly adorable comic, and I can see how it would have gained so much popularity on Tapas. 

We follow Planchette, a kitchen witch who moves to a new home that turns out to be super haunted. In her attempts to find someone to help her de-ghost her home, she meets a few other witches that round out the main cast. Each witch has her own issues and things going on, but ultimately they end up being friends and making wholesome connections with each other. Even the ghost busting turns out mostly wholesome in the end.

This was honestly just a really cute, cozy witch comic. The art was fun and a little twee, with some fun character work and interesting color work. Super recommended if you're looking for a cute, no stress fun time.