Faith Erin Hicks pairs a socially awkward hockey girl with an outgoing, confident drama boy in her latest YA graphic novel. Alix loves hockey, but her teammates... not so much. Team Captain Lindsay is a bully and none of the other girls stand up for Alix for fear of Lindsay turning on them next. Classic toxic high school behavior. One day something in Alix flips and she punches Lindsay. She's horrified by her behavior and, most of all, the fact that she didn't seem to be in control of herself at all.
She needs to figure out where that anger came from and how to handle it in a non-violent way that doesn't allow Lindsay to get away with being a monster. When she sees Ezra being bullied for being gay (he's bisexual, but bigots gonna bigot), she admires his apparent ease with stopping the bully with words and coming away looking even better than before. Ezra isn't a "popular" kid, but he has lots of close friends, something Alix envies. Alix asks him to help her and he agrees, but she doesn't know his father was abusive.
Alix is the main protagonist in the book, but Ezra is a much more interesting character. He's going through a lot with his family and he learns a couple of important things about the way he's conducted his past relationships and friendships. His mother owns an antiques and thrift store and he loves finding treasures at yard sales. His drama club is a lot of fun.
Alix is almost entirely hockey. It's what she loves, what she does, the reason she doesn't have a close relationship with her mom, and the reason she has no relationship at all with her father, a hockey player. I assume this book will go over better with hockey fans!
The romance is very sweet, full of casual hangouts strung together by the anger management plot device. The characters are at the older end of high school, but I gave it to my 12 year old to read. Your mileage may vary. A therapist would have been much more effective, but that wouldn't make for much of a romance. It's all tied up nicely, with resolutions for each of the characters' family arcs plus Alix's hockey situation and Ezra's friendship mess. I would have liked more time spent with Alix and Ezra's respective father issues, just for the reassurance that the kids are getting the help they need to process and move on.
If you're familiar with Hicks' illustration style, you know what to expect here. Large facial features, lots of angles and a light palette with limited shading. My very fancy database has two options for color: black and white or color, and I regret not adding a category for three-color illustration. Hockey Girl Loves Drama Boy is primarily black and white with a blue roughly the shade of Alix's shorts on the cover as a highlight color. Please scroll down for an interior example, shared with permission from the publisher.
Hockey Girl Loves Drama Boy is a sweet opposites-attract high school romance comic that will appeal to fans of Check, Please! and Pumpkinheads.
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Thanks to First Second for sending me a review copy!
