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A review by shaun_trinh
Heartstopper Volume 4 by Alice Oseman
5.0
Volume 4 finally arrived to the US and into my local Barnes n' Nobles the other day so I could read up on the latest installment of the Heartstopper series and it did not dissapoint!
While getting through every book I noticed how the series steadily started taking up a more serious tone and heavy topics, which has proven to be the most true with Volume 4. I adore that this installment didn't let the wholesome romance between Nick and Charlie, overshadow and glamorize the real issues that Volume 4 sets out to cover. It delved into the struggles of people who have an undiagnosed mental illness, as well as the loved ones around them, while maintaining a respectful light-hearted read that his been apart of this series since the beginning.
I also really liked how Oserman made a point of addressing how centering your life around 1 person, even if it's a person you love, is incredibly unhealthy. Regardless of age or maturity, this is something that anyone can fall into and I think this point went really well with Charlie struggling to tell his parents about his eating disorder, and Nick having a hard time figuring out how he can help Charlie.
Another part of the story I enjoyed was that it didn't romanticize psych wards or recovery. Oserman didn't paint a perfect, easily curable journey with Charlie's recovery. It was difficult for everyone involved and there were hicups, relapses in it, and the journey doesn't just suddenly end. Charlie isn't randomly cured and his recovery is over. One of my absolute favorite lines from this book is when Charlie says
"Geoff says im making progress, but im starting to realize now that there might never be an end."
"This could be something that will always be there in the back of my mind, waiting to emerge aain and bring all the bad feelings bad."
I love these quotes so much because i really draws attention to the fact that mental illness and really any trauma doesn't just go away. There's not a magical cure to it that will take the mental illness, pain, or memories away. A lot of the time these are things that people need to work to cope with, and not get rid of, which isn't often portrayed in media. So I give high praise to Oserman for how she handled this topic.
For the most part I had no complaints for the story besides some nitpicks. For the most part I was fine with the light-weight, corny approach to the dialouge, but sometimes I feel like Oserman beat us on the head with the messaging when it wasn't necessary. The reader doesn't need everything spelled out to them.
This next thing I have mixed feelings about and kind of circles back to the point above. In the last 3rd of the story after Charlie tells his family about his eating disorder, we get two giant info dumps through Nick and Charlie's journaling. We're told a lot of things about how they're handling Charlies recovery process, and it was just so much telling and beating us on the head instead of showing us through the plot. At a point I felt like I had stopped reading a story, and was just being recounted what had happened by someone who had already read the entire story. I like the idea behind it, and I think I would have been fine if it had just been Charlie who had journaled, but just having 2 giant info dumps was a bit much, and I think it could have been spaced out instead of having all of the journaling happening at once.
But with that said, this has definetly been my favorite entry in the Heartstopper series and i'm very excited to see what Oserman has in store for us in the future.
While getting through every book I noticed how the series steadily started taking up a more serious tone and heavy topics, which has proven to be the most true with Volume 4. I adore that this installment didn't let the wholesome romance between Nick and Charlie, overshadow and glamorize the real issues that Volume 4 sets out to cover. It delved into the struggles of people who have an undiagnosed mental illness, as well as the loved ones around them, while maintaining a respectful light-hearted read that his been apart of this series since the beginning.
I also really liked how Oserman made a point of addressing how centering your life around 1 person, even if it's a person you love, is incredibly unhealthy. Regardless of age or maturity, this is something that anyone can fall into and I think this point went really well with Charlie struggling to tell his parents about his eating disorder, and Nick having a hard time figuring out how he can help Charlie.
Another part of the story I enjoyed was that it didn't romanticize psych wards or recovery. Oserman didn't paint a perfect, easily curable journey with Charlie's recovery. It was difficult for everyone involved and there were hicups, relapses in it, and the journey doesn't just suddenly end. Charlie isn't randomly cured and his recovery is over. One of my absolute favorite lines from this book is when Charlie says
"Geoff says im making progress, but im starting to realize now that there might never be an end."
"This could be something that will always be there in the back of my mind, waiting to emerge aain and bring all the bad feelings bad."
I love these quotes so much because i really draws attention to the fact that mental illness and really any trauma doesn't just go away. There's not a magical cure to it that will take the mental illness, pain, or memories away. A lot of the time these are things that people need to work to cope with, and not get rid of, which isn't often portrayed in media. So I give high praise to Oserman for how she handled this topic.
For the most part I had no complaints for the story besides some nitpicks. For the most part I was fine with the light-weight, corny approach to the dialouge, but sometimes I feel like Oserman beat us on the head with the messaging when it wasn't necessary. The reader doesn't need everything spelled out to them.
This next thing I have mixed feelings about and kind of circles back to the point above. In the last 3rd of the story after Charlie tells his family about his eating disorder, we get two giant info dumps through Nick and Charlie's journaling. We're told a lot of things about how they're handling Charlies recovery process, and it was just so much telling and beating us on the head instead of showing us through the plot. At a point I felt like I had stopped reading a story, and was just being recounted what had happened by someone who had already read the entire story. I like the idea behind it, and I think I would have been fine if it had just been Charlie who had journaled, but just having 2 giant info dumps was a bit much, and I think it could have been spaced out instead of having all of the journaling happening at once.
But with that said, this has definetly been my favorite entry in the Heartstopper series and i'm very excited to see what Oserman has in store for us in the future.