A review by emily_m_green
Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me by Mariko Tamaki

emotional reflective sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

In Mariko Tamaki and Rosemary Valero-O’Connell’s Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me high school dating drama, Freddy has been on and off girlfriends with Laura Dean for some time. Laura is charismatic, fun, attractive, and popular. She makes Freddy feel like someone special--until she doesn’t. 

Freddy has been well-trained by Laura--it is Laura who calls all the shots, including when they will get together, what they will do, and how long they spend together. Freddy feels helpless to pull herself out of the cycle--when she is with Laura alone, she often feels incredible and when they are apart, she feels terrible. But most of the time, she just feels terrible. Laura disappears at parties to make out with other girls, disses Freddy’s friends, and invalidates Freddy’s feelings--any time Freddy brings up an issue, Laura shuts her down. So.

It is the classic gaslighting, verbally abusive partner. I have certainly seen this before. And it isolates the person from their friends, who get tired of seeing their friend abused, get tired of being ditched for a significant other, and get tired of the complaining about the partner and then returning. Yep. As Freddy compares it to in the beginning of the graphic novel, I know this song and I know it well: before I got married, let’s just say that I dated some real winners. 

One of the ways that this story is different is that Freddy and Laura are both girls. By being a book about two young lesbians who have an unhealthy relationship and seem to be realistic and even nuanced characters, we can see that the situation is addressing the fact that yes, gay people also have relationship issues. The book is not actually about them being gay, but about how their relationship is prolonged, how Laura gets away with treating Freddy poorly, and how Freddy allows herself to be pulled back in. It is not about their parents being disapproving or either girl experiencing homophobia, though the subject does come up. When we start to have queer characters with plotlines that do not revolve around their queerness, that is when we know that we are making progress. Yes, just like any other piece of someone’s identity, we need to have books about that--but not all the books with queer characters need to be about them being queer. 

The other way in which this book is different is that it is a graphic novel. There are several moments and expressions that are recorded only in images, such as a montage during parties. Also, there are talking stuffies, and who doesn’t love talking stuffies?

Would I teach Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me? Well, yes, yes I would. The book feels honest and not melodramatic, while addressing an important element of many unhealthy relationships. As previously mentioned, I have been trapped in such relationships and thinking that there was no way out--that I was doomed or fated to be stuck in that relationship forever. There was a time when I compared myself to Frida Kahlo. I know, there is no comparison, but at the time it seemed like a reassurance that these tumultuous love stories existed and were meant to be. And, of course, representation. We need to have more queer representation in what we teach. So, yes, thumbs up. Add it to the curriculum.