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anniereads221's review against another edition
funny
hopeful
informative
reflective
medium-paced
4.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Homophobia, Sexism, Eating disorder, Bullying, and Body shaming
jessnreads's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
funny
informative
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
Is it a queer experience to hide in a library? I'm not sure but perhaps so. I really enjoyed this graphic novel! I loved the illustrations and how they changed a little throughout the book. Everything just felt right whilst I was reading it and I cried and laughed and had a few existential crises but it made me enjoy this book that much more. I don't really know how to put it into words how much I enjoyed this book, I just did...and I may have given it a hug once I finished it too.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Lesbophobia, Homophobia, Panic attacks/disorders, Eating disorder, and Body shaming
avisreadsandreads's review
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
4.5
Content Warnings
Moderate: Bullying, Eating disorder, Homophobia, Panic attacks/disorders, and Sexism
Minor: Body shaming and Suicidal thoughts
just_one_more_paige's review against another edition
hopeful
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
fast-paced
4.0
Honestly, I had never heard of this book until one day last week I was shelving books at the library in the graphic novel section. Since, as I mentioned on my recent post about Palimpsest, I’ve been getting more and more into graphic memoirs, I sorta slowed down my shelving rate to peek at what else was there as I went. This spine stuck right out at me, because it’s so wonderfully bright! So, I grabbed it to see what it was about and I knew, immediately, that I was going to have to check it out and read it for real because the description on the back mentioned that the author obsessed over Willow from Buffy the Vampire Slayer as she was growing up and, honestly I don’t think I’ve ever felt so seen by a back cover blurb.
So, basically, this is a graphic memoir about the author, Eleanor Crewes, and her personal journey to the feelings of off-ness/wrong-ness she had while growing up and how that eventually, over years and with a build-up of evidence, led to her realization that she is gay. Just as the title promises.
For being a 300+ page book, I sped through it in less than an hour. I mean, know it’s illustrated, but still, Persepolis and Good Talk both took me multiple sittings. Though to be fair, their content was much heavier. And they had multiple panels on each page, where this was a very “one illustration/caption per page” situation. But anyways, the point is that I read this fast AF. And I did appreciate that – the speed fit with the general vibe of the memoir and story-telling style. Though this memoir does cover some more serious points, like an unhealthy relationship with body image and at least one instance of a panic attack, it was more done to illustrate that while Crewes was intellectually ignoring her feelings of things not being right, her body was telling her to pay better attention because she was definitely missing something, as opposed to a deep dive into the mental health aspects of her coming of age/coming out. So, that being said, this was an overall really lighthearted account of Crewe’s sexuality realization(s) and journey.
I feel like it’s worth mentioning a few things about this memoir that sat a little wrong for me. Well, the first is perhaps just on me for flipping pages too fast, but I felt like some of the illustrations of Crewes (and her ever-changing appearance and style as she searched for the outer self that matched her true inner self) were easily confused with that of her friends. Like, in some series of illustrations I really didn’t know who was Crewes and who were her friends and that made some of the conversational back and forth a bit unwieldy to follow. In addition, at a few points it felt like there were missing pages/panels because I couldn’t figure out how some of the captions fit into the ones around them/the rest of the chapter. Again, maybe I was just reading too fast?
Another thing, and this actually did sit strangely for me, is that this book heavily focused on boys feeling wrong and a centering of sex as a marker for being an adult/in a real relationship. And I get that for many reasons. I understand that that is a societal scaffold, one that Crewes grew up firmly within, but her own acknowledgement. And I also get that this is a memoir, and therefore speaks to just her experience (and she never suggests that it is anything more than that). However, I still feel like it is worth noting that, for any readers who identify as bi or as ace/aro, there may be a sort of alienation in that perspective. Just…I wanted to note it, because I felt it. Not as a reflection on the author, because again, she never claims for this to be anything other than her own story/experience, but just as a low-key CW to anyone who might need it.
That being said, there were also a few parts the I truly, deeply, strongly, completely identified with. I usually add quotes/passages at the end that speak to me, but these three really hit on such a profoundly personal and recognizable level, that I feel like including them in the meat of the review is the only way to really do it. Like, these are thoughts and emotions and experiences that I have felt/lived and never put into words, mostly because I haven’t necessarily tried, but now that I’ve read them here, I am feeling so intensely seen and now I don’t have to put it into words myself because Crewes did it for me. So, here they are, the three moments in this graphic memoir that made me actually gasp out loud a bit:
“People might think that everyone starts out in a closet until they’re ready to ‘come out.’ […] But what’s funny for me is that I didn’t even know that there was a closet – or that I was very much stuck inside it.”
“It wasn’t such an epiphany […] it was more like small moments of clarity, like I had to test the words, allow them to settle inside me before speaking them aloud to anyone else.”
“I was nervous […] not because they were against it but because they’d never lived with it. Gay, queer, LGBT+ was not a part of their daily lives and so they had raised me in an unconsciously heterosexual environment.”
Just yea. I’m gonna end it there because I don’t really feel the need to follow-up that up with anything else. This was a fast, upbeat, enjoyably illustrated memoir about coming to terms with one’s sexuality. There were moments of some gravity, but mostly it was done in a playful and fun way (both in the words and in the graphics) that is leaving me, the reader, feeling light (in the weighted way) after finishing it.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Panic attacks/disorders and Eating disorder
Minor: Body shaming
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