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3.82 AVERAGE
3.82 AVERAGE
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
This was such a cute and lovely story about a young girl using her love for the Beatles to deal with her anxiety around school and socialising. The art style worked really well with the story, and I loved the use of black and white along with the vibrant colour palette. A very relatable story about social anxiety, though it didn't go very deep.
funny
hopeful
inspiring
fast-paced
Content Warnings
Graphic: Mental illness
Quite a unique graphical memoir, this. But it could have been so much better.
Magali is an eleven year old with super-achiever psychologist parents and an elder sister who is brilliant at school. Magali hence finds herself burdened under the spoken and unspoken expectations of everyone around her. Her terrible anxiety creates a phobia of school that soon generates psychosomatic effects. While she is being home-schooled during this phase, she discovers The Beatles. The rest of the story is about the impact their music made on her life and the way she battled her mental struggled to resume active schooling.
On the face of it, the concept is fabulous. Teenage struggles with expectations, bodily anxieties and social dilemmas are pretty common. But to see music from many decades before coming to the rescue is novel. However, where the book falls short is in the detailing. The story seems to jump over the hows and whys of Magali’s problem and just reveals the whats.
The graphical part is good, not great. The earlier pages in the book are primarily white, gray and pink, depicting Magali’s bleak view of life. But with the Beatles introduced, coloured swirls start making an appearance. However, the pages are quite cluttered. There are parallel narratives unfolding on many of the pages, where the illustrations follow one story track and the background script narrates another. It makes for a cramped experience. The font is the biggest disappointment. When everything written in small case cursive, I had to really strain my eyes to understand the lines.
Overall, this might be a one-time read, but nothing exceptional.
Thank you, NetGalley and Europe Comics, for the ARC of the book in exchange for an honest review.
Magali is an eleven year old with super-achiever psychologist parents and an elder sister who is brilliant at school. Magali hence finds herself burdened under the spoken and unspoken expectations of everyone around her. Her terrible anxiety creates a phobia of school that soon generates psychosomatic effects. While she is being home-schooled during this phase, she discovers The Beatles. The rest of the story is about the impact their music made on her life and the way she battled her mental struggled to resume active schooling.
On the face of it, the concept is fabulous. Teenage struggles with expectations, bodily anxieties and social dilemmas are pretty common. But to see music from many decades before coming to the rescue is novel. However, where the book falls short is in the detailing. The story seems to jump over the hows and whys of Magali’s problem and just reveals the whats.
The graphical part is good, not great. The earlier pages in the book are primarily white, gray and pink, depicting Magali’s bleak view of life. But with the Beatles introduced, coloured swirls start making an appearance. However, the pages are quite cluttered. There are parallel narratives unfolding on many of the pages, where the illustrations follow one story track and the background script narrates another. It makes for a cramped experience. The font is the biggest disappointment. When everything written in small case cursive, I had to really strain my eyes to understand the lines.
Overall, this might be a one-time read, but nothing exceptional.
Thank you, NetGalley and Europe Comics, for the ARC of the book in exchange for an honest review.