Friends With Boys by Faith Erin Hicks
9:07 PM
Publisher: First Second
ISBN: 9781596435568
Genre: Coming of Age Graphic Novel
Review by Phil
Synopsis(Goodreads.com):
After years of homeschooling, Maggie is starting high school. It's pretty terrifying.
Maggie's big brothers are there to watch her back, but ever since Mom left it just hasn't been the same.
Besides her brothers, Maggie's never had any real friends before. Lucy and Alistair don't have lots of friends either. But they eat lunch with her at school and bring her along on their small-town adventures.
Missing mothers...distant brothers...high school...new friends... It's a lot to deal with. But there's just one more thing.
MAGGIE IS HAUNTED.
Maggie's big brothers are there to watch her back, but ever since Mom left it just hasn't been the same.
Besides her brothers, Maggie's never had any real friends before. Lucy and Alistair don't have lots of friends either. But they eat lunch with her at school and bring her along on their small-town adventures.
Missing mothers...distant brothers...high school...new friends... It's a lot to deal with. But there's just one more thing.
MAGGIE IS HAUNTED.
My Thoughts (Spoiler Free)
Hey everyone, Phil here again with another review, this one is a first to me because Friends With Boys is actually a graphic novel, and I have never reviewed one before! This may be a huge train wreck but lets hope everything ends up okay!
So Friends With Boys is a very "slice of life"/coming of age story about a high-school Freshman, Maggie, who is going to public school for the first time. All her life Maggie, along with her three older brothers, has been homeschooled up until 8th grade, then, when they need to enter highschool, their parents enrolled them into the public school system. All of Maggie's brothers adjusted to the change pretty well and have made their own friends, but Maggie is extremely nervous. It doesn't help that after Maggie's 8th grade, her mother (and teacher) left her family.
The story follows Maggie along her journey of discovering who she is, and getting through her first few months of her Freshman year. Along the way she meets sibling Lucy and Alistair, who soon become her best friends. But her older brothers aren't too fond of her friendship with the "weirdos" of the school, and try to make Maggie stay away from them. Overall Friends With Boys is a story about friendship, family, and change. Oh yeah, also Maggie is haunted by a ghost, but that really isn't important to the plot of the novel and isn't even fully explained by the end of the book.
What I loved about Friends With Boys , is that is seemed very believable (besides the whole ghost part). Maggie and her family's emotions were all very realistic, and it was really nice to see that in a graphic novel. I think a lot of graphic novel writers go over the top simply because they can, but that isn't always needed, and Friends With Boys is the perfect example of that.
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| Friends With Boys by Faith Erin Hicks |
Along with he very believable story line, I thought the art in this book was really great. As an artist myself, I really appreciated all of the hard work that I know must have gone into this book. Faith Erin Hicks added the perfect degree of humor into her illustrations. Also the illustrations themselves were just really good, somehwere in this review I will put an example so you can see for yourself.
Overall I really did enjoy Friends With Boys, and it has duly deserved the top spot on my list of favorite graphic novels (even though I have only read a total of three graphic novels...ever).
I totally recommend this book, and I gave it 4/5 stars!
♚♚♚♚♔
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