A review by redhairedashreads
Girl Haven by Lilah Sturges, Meaghan Carter

2.0

 
2 stars - It was ok

While this was a transgender coming-of-age story, it was a bit disappointing. This was about a group of LGBTQ students who find themselves in a magical world that needs saving from the Scourge. I mostly enjoyed Ash’s journey to figure out their gender identity but there were two main things that prevented me from enjoying this. 

The evil in this is masculinity and boys.  Boys and men are not evil and they shouldn’t be portrayed that way. Diversity shouldn’t demand we exclude anyone, including cis men. Yes we should be fighting against sexism, which is discussed, but that doesn’t mean fighting against men in general like this story makes it seem. 

Another issue I had was that Chloe is basically the black angry butch lesbian stereotype and has basically no real personality or character development outside of that. This was supposed to be a diverse graphic novel but instead we get stereotypes with a men hating world. I really expected more from this story and I am just really disappointed. 

Trigger Warnings: sexism; gender dysphoria 
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