Sarah Winifred Searle

In this semi-autobiographical graphic novel, Winifred is starting her sophomore year of high school alone - her two best friends from freshman year have both transferred to a private school. Luckily, Winifred reconnects with Tilly, a childhood friend of hers who she grew apart from in junior high, and makes a couple new friends, April and Oscar.

During a sleepover, Winifred, April, and Oscar discover they all have one thing in common: they all secretly hate themselves. They all feel like poor fits for the places in which they've found themselves. April's mom is constantly on her case about the clothes she wears, her father is rude to her friends, and she's struggling with her gender identity and more that she hasn't yet admitted to her friends. Oscar is bisexual, feels like a terrible person because of how things ended with his ex-boyfriend, and is dealing with issues related to his grades and coursework. Winifred, meanwhile, is starting to question her sexuality - she's developing a crush on Oscar, but she also can't stop thinking about a moment when it seemed like Tilly might be interested in her. Unfortunately, Winifred is also dealing with an eating disorder that's gradually getting worse, as well as worries about her weight and how others perceive her.

Winifred discovers that art is a good outlet for her, and she and Oscar, with April's encouragement, produce a comic zine together.

This was a quiet but rough read. In her author's note, Searle writes that this is a fictional story inspired by experiences she had in high school - April and Oscar weren't recreations of real people but rather a combination of meaningful moments and experiences, but Winifred was pretty much the author. Winifred's struggles with loneliness, her worries about how other perceived her, and her anxiety that morphed into an eating disorder all reminded me of how difficult and emotional growing up were and felt very real. The direction Oscar's script for the comic took also had me worrying about the possibility that he was considering suicide, and at one point Winifred is sent to her school's counselor because of concerns that she's self-harming.

A good reminder that growing up is hard, especially for kids who don't quite feel like they fit in with everyone around them and/or are dealing with mental health issues. Art and writing gave these kids an outlet, but it also helped, a lot, that they had at least a few supportive and caring adults around them.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)… (meer)

Representation: Black characters
Trigger warnings: Self harm, implied depression, internalised body/fat shaming, bulimia
Score: Six points out of ten.
This review can also be found on The StoryGraph.

Man, I'm disappointed that CBCA shortlisted this book this year for Older Readers. They could've chosen anything else but this novel, and still they chose this. Come on. Really? There are so many flaws in this novel I don't even know where to begin, and it will probably be something I would never reread. It starts with the main character Winifred (whose last name I forgot) starting 10th grade at her new (American) school in the early 2000s, specifically 2002. Here is where the flaws surface, first, the book is too slow paced for me to enthral myself in like the last book I read and second, the storyline is too disjointed and hard for me to read, there are too many events going on like the zines, the story within the story, Win's character dynamics with her friends and other people and so on.

Third and worst of all was how the author dealt with significant issues in the narrative, because it missed the mark. Shame. It looks like the author tried to put as many trigger warnings into the book as she could (as mentioned above) without any explanation. I was left with questions about Win, like why does she have internalised fat shaming? Why does she have depression? Why does she do self harm? The art style was okay, except the purple ears. Why? It might be a stylistic choice. Or something else entirely. It's not clear why since the author never explained it to me, but at least Win goes to a mental health service. With that out of the way, the book didn't excite me and fizzled out. Shame.… (meer)

6/10, I didn't feel that connected to the story. The art was nice, the story was intriguing but fell flat at times. I didn't think the ghost part was really necessary, it's just Harriet going off into a secret room only to find nothing much there, except some things that the old owner of the house left behind. I did like the main character though, her friends essentially isolated her, and if it weren't for her family, she would've been all alone, she spends her holidays trying to write to her friends, but they didn't want to respond. She tries to get into reading some classic books, some she liked, like Beetlejuice, while others she did not like, like The Secret Garden. In the end, she just goes back to school, and the story just ends? I would've liked to see Harriet make some new and better friends had the story not ended so quickly and abruptly. If you like short and sweet graphic novels, this is the book for you.… (meer)