A gorgeously wrought, therapeutic story filled with tenderness and honesty.
Valerie Chu’s secret is eating her alive.
Val has been pressured to stay thin for as long as she can remember, her mother’s own disordered eating habits bleeding over and taking control of hers. Though her mom cooks delicious Chinese dishes, she’s always quick to remind Val to watch what she eats, often body-shaming Val’s curvy White best friend, Jordan. Her friends gently tease Val for being so tiny, but none of them know about her disordered eating or her bulimic compulsions. While she’s kept both hidden all these years, her struggles come to a head while on a class trip to Paris. Unable to keep to her purging schedule and enjoy the sights, Val begins to reevaluate the importance of being thin. Just as she’s settling into this new mindset, a family tragedy throws her whole life into upheaval. Ying’s artwork is appropriately nuanced and expressive, approaching the topics of grief, eating disorders, and mental health conditions sensitively and complemented by Wong’s subdued palette of mint green, soft peach, slate gray, and light brown. Classic bordered panels fill the front half of the book with a sense of strict control that begins to unravel later in the story. The impact of social media on teen girls’ body image is also addressed: Val scrolls through Instagram several times, making the correlation between her unhappiness and the platform’s impact clear.
A gorgeously wrought, therapeutic story filled with tenderness and honesty. (content note, afterword, resources) (Graphic fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: April 25, 2023
ISBN: 9781250767004
Page Count: 208
Publisher: First Second
Review Posted Online: Feb. 7, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
PROFILES
There’s not much plot here, but readers will relish the opportunity to climb inside Autumn’s head.
The finely drawn characters capture readers’ attention in this debut.
Autumn and Phineas, nicknamed Finny, were born a week apart; their mothers are still best friends. Growing up, Autumn and Finny were like peas in a pod despite their differences: Autumn is “quirky and odd,” while Finny is “sweet and shy and everyone like[s] him.” But in eighth grade, Autumn and Finny stop being friends due to an unexpected kiss. They drift apart and find new friends, but their friendship keeps asserting itself at parties, shared holiday gatherings and random encounters. In the summer after graduation, Autumn and Finny reconnect and are finally ready to be more than friends. But on August 8, everything changes, and Autumn has to rely on all her strength to move on. Autumn’s coming-of-age is sensitively chronicled, with a wide range of experiences and events shaping her character. Even secondary characters are well-rounded, with their own histories and motivations.
There’s not much plot here, but readers will relish the opportunity to climb inside Autumn’s head. (Fiction. 14 & up)Pub Date: April 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4022-7782-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A heavy read about the harsh realities of tragedy and their effects on those left behind.
In this companion novel to 2013’s If He Had Been With Me, three characters tell their sides of the story.
Finn’s narrative starts three days before his death. He explores the progress of his unrequited love for best friend Autumn up until the day he finally expresses his feelings. Finn’s story ends with his tragic death, which leaves his close friends devastated, unmoored, and uncertain how to go on. Jack’s section follows, offering a heartbreaking look at what it’s like to live with grief. Jack works to overcome the anger he feels toward Sylvie, the girlfriend Finn was breaking up with when he died, and Autumn, the girl he was preparing to build his life around (but whom Jack believed wasn’t good enough for Finn). But when Jack sees how Autumn’s grief matches his own, it changes their understanding of one another. Autumn’s chapters trace her life without Finn as readers follow her struggles with mental health and balancing love and loss. Those who have read the earlier book will better connect with and feel for these characters, particularly since they’ll have a more well-rounded impression of Finn. The pain and anger is well written, and the novel highlights the most troublesome aspects of young adulthood: overconfidence sprinkled with heavy insecurities, fear-fueled decisions, bad communication, and brash judgments. Characters are cued white.
A heavy read about the harsh realities of tragedy and their effects on those left behind. (author’s note, content warning) (Fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781728276229
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
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