collected
Fiction · Comics & Graphic Novels · Novel · Young Adult
About 6 h 30 min · at 30 minutes a day, about 13 days
Estimated from the page count of this edition. Dense books can take longer than the estimate.
At Awago Beach, Rose and her younger summer friend Windy swim, rent horror movies and watch the older teenagers around the local store. But Rose's parents are arguing, and her mother is withdrawing from the holiday routines Rose remembers. As Rose takes an interest in Dunc, the boy behind the store counter, she and Windy begin to disagree about the people they observe.
Quiet and melancholy, the YA graphic novel lingers over ordinary summer days and uncomfortable conversations. Jillian Tamaki's blue-toned drawings leave room for beaches, gestures and silences. The girls' limited understanding matters as much as the events around them, and the dialogue includes strong language.
Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).
Highly regarded
No, the linear story, spare dialogue and blue-toned drawings make it approachable. The emotional complexity comes from what Rose and Windy only partly understand, with gestures and silences carrying meaning alongside their conversations.
Not really, the beach days, swimming and rented horror movies sit alongside parental arguments and Rose's mother's withdrawal. The pace is measured, and the mood is quiet, melancholy and wistful rather than carefree.
Strong language in the dialogue is the clearest concern. There are also mild elements involving abuse, self-harm or suicide, sexual content, substance use and violence, alongside emotionally uncomfortable family conversations.
Rose's friendship with the younger Windy is central to the coming of age story. Their disagreements about the older teenagers they observe bring their limited understanding into focus, alongside Rose's interest in Dunc and the strain within her family.
320 pages in the First Second 2014 paperback edition.
First Second · 2014 · paperback. ISBN 9781596437746.
About 6 hours 30 minutes at 50 pages an hour, based on the 320-page First Second edition. Dense books can take longer.
Mariko Tamaki is a Canadian writer and artist whose career spans literary graphic novels, adaptations of the Lumberjanes comics, performance work, and writing for Marvel and DC. Her best-known books often follow adolescents trying to understand feelings that resist the explanations offered by families, schools, friends, and romantic partners. In Skim, This One Summer, and Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me, private uncertainty unfolds within intense social environments, from compulsory mourning and family strain to the isolating pull of an unreliable relationship. Tamaki’s storytelling is typically character-centered and economical, using spare, conversational dialogue, shifts in atmosphere, and close observation to convey what her characters cannot readily say. Rather than treating adolescence as a sequence of lessons, she attends to its ambivalence: the gap between recognizing a harmful or painful situation and knowing how to move through it. That patient attention to emotional perception gives her work its particular clarity.
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