alexauthorshay 's review for:

Cruel Summer by Ed Brubaker

3.0

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I haven't read the Criminal series so I don't have the advantage of knowing these characters in a way readers who know Criminal would. I don't know if it would have helped me any, but as a standalone I had a hard time telling who was who at times because of the art style, and who was talking because so many speech bubbles had no attribution. I really liked what I've read so far of Kill or Be Killed so I wanted to give another of his works a try, but it kind of fell flat for me. The general idea of it is definitely depressing, with the trauma and violence etc, but the execution of it lacked something for me emotionally, a bit too distant from any of the characters to really invest in them.