Breaking Up

Created by: Aimee Freidman and Christine Norrie

Published by: PUBLISHER

ISBN: 0439748674 Amazon

Pages: 192

Thinking it was about time to read some teen fiction marketed to/at girls, I picked up Aimee Friedman and Christine Norrie's Breaking Up. (The cover lists it as A Fashion High graphic novel, so I assumed that Fashion High was an established brand in the teen-fiction arena, but a quick Googling has turned up nothing that would suggest the series is actually a series.)

The read, naturally, was light and breezy. It's an understandably inconsequential book, but one that's enjoyable in its excess of both drama and melodrama. Breaking Up charts the well-balanced cacophony that crops up in the lives of four girls who, until their tumultuous junior year of high school, have been best friends since time began. Now, growing into their own personalities and dreams and goals and tastes, they find that nothing lasts forever.

In fact, it doesn't even last very long when everyone is petty, self-absorbed, and governed entirely by the convictions of others. Ah, high school.

After all is said, the book was enjoyable. It would function perfectly as poolside reading as you sip margaritas out of mugs shaped like palm trees in Cancun. It never gets too heavy or depressing. The characters are cliched enough to keep you from too much mental heavy lifting (you know the geeky boy is a geek, despite dressing nonchalantly and looking halfway handsome, because he has a Star Trek t-shirt "not worn in an ironic/hipster way" and he mentions a friend wanting to have a Star Wars marathon). And Norrie's art is, as always, fluid and tells the story well (I'm a fan!).

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Comics by Seth T. Hahne