This book opens with the main character, Ben, getting kicked out by their parents after coming out as nonbinary. It's December in North Carolina and Ben is terrified. They call their older sister Hannah, whom they haven't seen in ten years, since Hannah moved out of the house at 18 and cut all contact with her parents. Hannah immediately welcomes Ben into her home, and her husband (a high school chemistry teacher) helps get Ben enrolled in a new school for the last semester of their senior year. The first half or so of this book mainly focuses on Ben trying to recover somewhat from this trauma- they reluctantly start therapy and medication, and pour all of their time and energy into art and texting with their best friend in California. Until the exceedingly friendly fellow senior who was assigned as their first-week guide, Nathan, begins to break into Ben's self-imposed solitude. Nathan introduces Ben to his friend group, ropes them into student council projects, and invites them to parties and movie screenings in the park. Is Nathan just a fabulous friend, or does all this kindness mean something more?

The main reason I gave this book a lower rating, despite being quite excited to read about a nonbinary protagonist, is that I don't enjoy queer stories where teens are kicked out of the house. I am very lucky and privileged in that I can't relate to stories of parental rejection. Some readers will find this aspect of the story deeply cathartic; I struggled with it and almost put the book down a few chapters in. I also wished that there was more exploration of gender identity in the book. I did enjoy it more once the tone lightened into a somewhat predictable but still sweet teen romance.

Lora Xi is a 12 year old with a vivid imagination, full of spirits, fairies and ghosts. But as she enters junior high, her friends all seem to be moving on from imaginative play. Feeling abandoned, Lora holds a séance tea party and meets a real ghost: Alexa Hudson, who died in the 1970s. Lora is delighted to have a new friend who won't grow up and leave her. But Lora isn't fixed in time herself: as she ages, Alexa fades. This a very beautiful and whimsical young adult story, though I didn't find the passage of time a hundred percent believable, I still enjoyed it.

Short but powerful, this book follows Jam, a trans girl living in the supposed utopia of Lucille, a town which has no monsters and no crime. But when Jam accidentally drips blood on one of her mother's paintings, the figure on the canvas comes to life and tells her it is a monster hunter. There is a monster hiding in plain sight in her community, and it's threatening her best friend Redemption and his family. Jam must decide if she believes this impossible being- who looks pretty monstrous itself- and pursue the evil doer... or close her eyes and keep pretending that Lucille is safe. I listened as an audiobook and greatly enjoyed Christopher Myer's rich narration.

I'm not much of a superhero comics reader, but I wanted to give this one a try as I had heard good things. It's the first book about this character, but it's not the first book in the larger Catalyst Prime universe. It does a good job of quickly establishing the backstory: shortly after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans was also hit by a meteor shower which gave some individuals superpowers. The majority of the superheroes are Black or POC, which is refreshing, and gives the story some weight that I appreciated. Quin is a high school sophomore who gained the power of invulnerability, but he's been keeping it a secret for a while. A confrontation with some neighborhood bullies and a brief encounter with the superhero Glow after a protest rally turns violent make Quin decide that he wants to start using his power to help the community. But where to start? He gets a book called "Parkour for Ding Dongs" and tries to practice his leaping skills while thinking of potential crimes he might be able to stop. Just as he's entering the superhero field, a powerful man starts targeting superheroes with dangerous new weapons. Will Quin's hero career be cut short before it can even begin?

This beautifully drawn sequel introduces a new character, Eliza, who was held back a year and is now in Marjorie's eighth grade class. She's a passionate photographer who believes in ghosts but has never seen one, and she is teased by exactly the same kids who made fun of Marjorie the year before. Marjorie, who has somehow ended up in the ingroup, is torn between defending Eliza and protecting her new status as part of the popular club. The story unfolds slowly, with the fantasy elements woven in so neatly that it no longer seems strange that Marjorie's laundry mat is full the cheerful dead. Marjorie feels like she has to keep the ghosts a secret, and never mix the two halves of her life. But people both dead and alive can get powerfully lonely, and the desire to be seen and understood is universal.

Short, honest, funny, vulnerable. Makes me want to go watch Queer Eye, unsurprisingly. I definitely recommend the audiobook read by the author!

Short, funny, thought provoking. If you are a fan of Aminder Dhaliwal's longer books (Woman World, Cyclopedia Exotica) then I definitely recommend you pick up this comic as well . You can find it through the indie publisher Shortbox website (or at zinefests, once those start up again).

I've been following Noelle Stevenson on tumblr since 2011, the fanart days, and I always looked forward to his year-end reviews. I think I had read over half of this book previously online! But I really enjoyed reading these comics again, in chronological order, and with new narration to give them more context. As a memoir it's fairly loose, but many of the pieces hit very vulnerable emotional notes.