HEARTSTOPPER VOL. ONE, a graphic novel YA coming-of-age coming-out story

HEARTSTOPPER vol. 1
ALICE OSEMAN
Graphix (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$9.99 on Kindle

Everyone else on the planet luuuvs these stories and, on 20 May 2022, Netflix viewers (including me, actually) are getting two more seasons with two cute-enough English boys playing the leads. Enjoy!

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: (from the author's site) Boy meets boy. Boys become friends. Boys fall in love. An LGBTQ+ graphic novel about life, love, and everything that happens in between - for fans of The Art of Being Normal, Holly Bourne and Love, Simon.

Charlie and Nick are at the same school, but they've never met ... until one day when they're made to sit together. They quickly become friends, and soon Charlie is falling hard for Nick, even though he doesn't think he has a chance.

But love works in surprising ways, and Nick is more interested in Charlie than either of them realised.

Heartstopper is about love, friendship, loyalty and mental illness. It encompasses all the small stories of Nick and Charlie's lives that together make up something larger, which speaks to all of us.

This is the first volume of Heartstopper, with more to come.

(from Goodreads) Charlie, a highly-strung, openly gay over-thinker, and Nick, a cheerful, soft-hearted rugby player, meet at a British all-boys grammar school. Friendship blooms quickly, but could there be something more...?

Charlie Spring is in Year 10 at Truham Grammar School for Boys. The past year hasn't been too great, but at least he's not being bullied anymore. Nick Nelson is in Year 11 and on the school rugby team. He's heard a little about Charlie - the kid who was outed last year and bullied for a few months - but he's never had the opportunity to talk to him.

They quickly become friends, and soon Charlie is falling hard for Nick, even though he doesn't think he has a chance. But love works in surprising ways, and sometimes good things are waiting just around the corner...

MY GOODREADS FRIEND STEVEN LOVED IT TO BITS AND IT WAS CHEAP SO WHY NOT?

My Review: The reasons why not:
1) YA...how often have I bemoaned the depressing prevalence of YA books in publishing? It seems that what ain't Fifty Shades of Ptui is Twiphlegm.
2) Coming-of-age...hated that mess in 1972, no fonder of it 49 years on.
3) Coming out...never having been convincingly *in* I'm less emotionally invested in coming *out*.
4) Graphic novel...comic books weren't part of my childhood. My sisters are more like aunts, I have no memories of them before they were teens so, to me, adults. The boys I hung around with weren't comic-booky sorts, they were playscripts and Asimov readers, Star Trek fanfic writers...not superhero-worshipping guys. They could, however, decline the nouns in Elvish from Lord of the Rings and draw maps of Mordor from memory.

So what the hell was this oh-so-precious overbred individual doing here? Making a concerted effort not to die above the neck before dying below it. Must examine and challenge those prejudices lest they clog my mental arteries too far.

It was fun, in a weird way, to make it through the story in 25 minutes, then go back and really look at the art.
They meet after a random seating assignment:

They get interested in each other:

Things move along, Nick discovering that he's got Feelings for another guy and...liking it:

...and Life goes on.

That's where I start moving with the times. I LOVE the message of this story, I think the presentation of the big sporty boy who's really just never so much as thought about boys sexually finding out that falling in love means it's with the guy wearing the body, not the body alone.

Yeah. Absolutely perfectly in tune with the way I think about the world of sex and love. So very much what I'd've given my son!

So, on balance, a yes from me with the caveat that I wouldn't read more at the regular $9.99 price because of my own tastes...and I'd say the art is, at best, serviceable. I always knew at whom I was looking, and had a vague sort of feel for where the scenes were set, but...if I was wearing socks, they wouldn't be blown off. Again, that's a personal taste matter, and the pages above should tell you what you think of the art for yourself.

Smiles, not wreaths of joy, are more than good enough in the Plague Year.