Very sweet second-chance love story with some adorably charming grandmothers. I think the main characters, Elle and Mari, are the highlight and it's really nice to see them come back together. However, the dialogue is pretty stilted, and sounds more like an early draft that could have been polished up. I also wish the plot overall had been more fleshed out; it kinda jumped from point to point without much muscle in between.
Also I really wanna play bingo now... ( )

The extra vignettes at the end are essential, complicating and filling in the parts of the main story that were too smooth and too brief. I wish they were better incorporated. Taken as a whole, this was lovely and sweet, definitely recommend! ( )

This was very sweet. Many happy endings. ( )

this was beautiful!!

i loved the art and the story had a real strength to it, but the pacing was a little bit off. some of the characters actions were a little bit unbelievable or there was SO much family drama i was dying lol. i enjoyed it thoroughly and really cheered for the characters. the art, again, was totally gorgeous and had a style all of its own! i just wish the story were fleshed out a lil more.

// i also feel like there was some not-so-favourable things said about the author a while ago on twitter, but i can't find any sources at all beyond stray blog posts so WHO knows what happened, twitter is a minefield. ( )

i'm not sure how to rate this because it's becoming increasingly obvious that most graphic novels just aren't my thing. and this is more comic than novel, which is even less up my alley. it's missing all the things i tend to want more of in this format, so that's not surprising. but there are moments of depth, so i know that it can be done and it just irks me that it's not. but maybe that's acceptable for this type of storytelling, i don't know. the story itself is also too overly sweet for me, with some too-obvious messaging (but it's messaging that i want out there, so that makes it a little easier for me).

what i do like about this is that it's a story of two older women coming back together in love, in their 60's. something you don't see too often. they're also both women of color - in fact, there are only a handful of background white people in the entire thing, and the only one with any lines is the teacher at the very beginning. so that's awesome. finally a story of women of color falling in love, and their families and community. the art is also mostly great. sometimes when hazel is talking she looks like she's screaming, but other than that it's well done and consistent and i liked it right away.

there are just a few places in the story that i wanted more. i didn't want a kiss when they ran into each other 48 years later, without even a hello. i wanted them to get to know each other again, to see who they were now, without assuming. that's a big oversight for me. i also thought that the conversations hazel had with her family (and their reactions) weren't done that well.

this edition has some fanfic added to the end, expanding on some of the stories, which is cool. all of them are well done and most of them manage to keep the art pretty similar. they fill in some holes in a good way, but none tell that part of the story that i feel like is really missing.

so, this is sweet (maybe too sweet) and important and the art is good, but like most graphic novels that i read, seems to be missing what i most want out of a book. ( )