I'm really not quite sure how to rate memoirs. I feel like they shouldn't really be rated, it's someone's life story.
Anyway, I felt seen on SO MANY LEVELS!! I don't thing I've ever read anyone go through exactly the same things I did growing up... It was quite touching.

3.5> Contente d'avoir lu cette BD, l'histoire de cet homme mérite d'être racontée.
Mais pour être honnête c'était très long, on nous raconte les moindres détails, et on aurait pu gagner une bonne centaine de pages (voire plus). Certes, c'est représentatif du temps long et ennuyeux et angoissant qu'a vécu Christophe André lors de son enlèvement, mais l'idée n'est pas de rendre notre temps long et ennuyeux lorsque nous lisons son histoire...

Destination Unknown is the beautiful but dramatic story about gay boys coming of age in the 1980s, the fear that comes with not knowing what this deadly disease was, only really knowing that, at the time, it was deadly, and discovering love while fearing almost everything about it.

It's a semi-autobiographical novel, and you can feel that. It's raw and honest and you can picture very well how young queer people around that time must have felt.
But it also manages to tell a beautiful love story between two young men. You understand both their stories, and care for them deeply.

For a long time now I've avoided anything that sounded "sad". For my own mental health I couldn't open a book about something sad, especially about queer people being sad.
But I'm so glad I read this.
It's not exactly an uplifting light and fun book, obviously, but it is full of love and uplifting moments throughout these times of fear and uncertainty. That made it all the more enjoyable.

A trans boy starts feeling like it's ok to express his true self when the new guy in his class asks him to set up a clothes brand with him.
It was so interesting to see how different people can love clothes and still have such different views on them. How it affects gender dysphoria and gender expression but also just expression in general.
I'm impatient to find out more about everyone and where this brand will take them.
I have a feeling I'll be getting very attached very soon.

Really really interesting manga. I feel like the trans sentiment is so well depicted, and the clothing line story is interesting too. I appreciate how we're now getting to see Ryo dive into his sexual orientation.

It's a shame even a manga as good as this one shows such a negative view of trans and queer people by almost everyone... Even those from the community.
It may be how the society is in Japan, but I'm getting really sick of always reading about this negativity in every LGBTQ+ manga out there.
Maybe one of them should represent a more accepting world which wouldn't provoke such bad feelings to / trigger people who are reading.

Maddy's father has convinced her she needs to pass as white if she wants to live "a normal life". At school, she's lived in fear, been bullied from the beginning. When an incident forces her to reveal to the school that she is, in fact, biracial, all hell breaks loose.

I really appreciated how this story was in fact multiple people's stories all tangled up in one. We followed not only the bullied Maddy who starts to find her voice, but also the racist mean girls, the sweet black quarterback player requestioning everything, and the ones who see but do nothing and how that can also affect them.
It's a horrific story of racism, coming-of-age, mystery and love, with a touch of paranormal.
Though the paranormal only takes up a tiny bit of space in this story, I appreciated that. We focused more on the characters, their relationships and their growth.

We also follow a sort of radio/podcast of people, years later, trying to figure out what actually happened the night everyone last saw Maddy.
As much as this part could have added a whole new level to the story, I felt like it could have been handled a little differently, if not to say it wasn't needed at all. Having these people we know nothing about and really don't care about, talk about characters we actually do appreciate, and having them tell us from the get go how everything is going to end... kinda takes away from the frightful ending we get.
I exepected something in this podcast to shock me, to bring a new meaning to the story. But I didn't get that. All i felt it did was explain to the readers things we already got from the story itself: racism.
But maybe I missed something?

All this to say, I really appreciated this story, loved most of the reading experience, felt connected to most of the characters (most importantly to the flawed ones), but ended up being a tad disappointed when it ended and there wasn't that little spark that made me say "OH".

Disclaimer: I know NOTHING about King's Carrie (don't look surprised, I'm new to horror), so I have no idea how this book relates to it or not, and how that may affect anyone's reading experience.

This isn't really for me, I think. Otherwise it's just a messy and boring graphic novel which I'm the only one to notice...
I would have powered through it if it truely were a memoir and/or a woman's relationship with sports & exercice. But in truth, it goes on and on about a whole lot of things I really didn't care about and were far from the actual secret to superhuman strength.

2022 reread: my feelings after four years remain very similar: love the Lynch brothers but can't really seem to care about the other characters or the actual story. Buuut now I know I can read the three books back to back, I feel like I can come to care for them in the next book (I hope).


3.5 ~ I can't wait to re-read this book before the sequel comes out. Hopefully I'll be more in the mood for it.
Of course I loved the (tiny) Pynch moments.
I love the Lynch Brothers and everything to do with their relationships.
I thought this was a book about the Lynch Brothers. Sadly the Lynch Brothers were only the main focus of 40% of this book... And I really couldn't come to care much about the other 60%.

What even happened in this book?