Reviews

Forest Hills Bootleg Society by Dave Baker

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misswitch's review against another edition

sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.0

Four girls on a mission to get some bootleg anime DVDs end up instead with a bootleg of an X-rated anime called Superlove XL. They decide to make some money by making copies of the DVD and selling them at their Christian boarding school.

This book started off solid and I thought for sure it was going to be a fun rollercoaster ride as these girls became the center of an underground DVD ring.

Nope. Instead we got the chronicles of how friendships and relationships fall apart due to insecurity, jealousy and greed. Side plots were introduced out of no where and disappeared just as quickly. Characters were introduced while surrounded by info bubbles, but much of the information was pointless to the story and EVERY character got this treatment, including ones who were only in the background and our characters never interacted with. It was a clever device at first that became overwhelming as you were trying to read the story because the flow was constantly interrupted by these info dumps that had no impact on the overall story. The ending was abrupt and depressing with no real closure.

twinkletoes21's review against another edition

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Words too small

radiergummi15's review against another edition

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emotional lighthearted sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

weeohh's review against another edition

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2.0

It's clear that the authors had fun putting this book together and I will give them that, there were times I considered it fun.
However, the story quickly became confusing with the pure amount of side notes and unnecessary character building.
It really felt like it was building to this big discovery but I ended the book feeling disappointed.

mergs_scribbles's review against another edition

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3.0

I went into this with no prior knowledge of the book and ended up not vibing with it.

This graphic novel relies heavily on info dumps about the characters between scenes instead of showing us which really isn’t my thing. These info dumps also make the graphic novel super text heavy. There were a number of times where I caught myself wanting to skim or just skip over text— especially if I thought it was unimportant background information that was never gonna come back later.