A review by sbelasco40
Winter Town by Stephen Emond

2.0

I have complicated feelings about this book. There were parts of it that were great, and I love the concept behind it - integrating a graphic/comic component. Some well-drawn parental-type figures including the male protagonist's grandmother (Gram), who is lively and wonderful, and of course his two gay bffs are fun and funny. But there's something weirdly unbalanced about the book as a whole - Evan, as the overachiever sacrificing his desires to his fathers' wishes, is neither that interesting or that deep, while his love interest, tortured Lucy, is both Manic Pixie Dream Girl and bipolar goth all wrapped into one, so weighed down she collapses under a pile of her own (unoriginal) angst. I kept wanting her to get therapy, or at least some sort of solid support system that isn't her childhood best friend who she sees for 2 weeks a year, but Emond wraps it all up with a nice little bow at the end while somehow skipping the hard work part that depicts how they get there. It might have been better as an actual graphic novel, and it feels a little like it got picked up because of its cool concept instead of the quality of the story. Disappointing.