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[libertyreads]

Book Review #100 of 2023--

Hockey Girl Loves Drama Boy by Faith Erin Hicks. Rating: 5 stars.

Read on August 6th.

Before I get into the bulk of my review, I want to say a quick thank you to both NetGalley and the publishers over at First Second for giving me access to this ARC in exchange for an honest review. In this graphic novel, we follow Alix who is a superstar on her high school's hockey team and Ezra who is well loved in the high school's drama team. One day after a game, Alix gets into a physical fight with her team captain and turns to calm, cool, collected Ezra for advice on dealing with her temper. As they begin to spend time together, they learn from each other and lean on one another for support which leads to feelings. Hockey Girl Loves Drama Boy comes out on October 3rd and is available for pre-order now.

I gave out a five star last month and now I'm giving out another one? Who am I? Well, I'm a girl who loves hockey and a girl who loves some contemporary graphic novels. One of my favorite graphic novels of all time is also from First Second and is about hockey. None of this should surprise anyone. I loved the communication style between the different characters which sounds like a weird compliment, but sometimes in stories the characters don't act or sound like teenagers. In this one, we see teens doing the teenage thing: withholding their feelings until they can't take it anymore and blowing up, feeling upset at one person and taking it out on another person, feeling hurt and lashing out at the person doing the hurting. The characters still managed to later communicate effectively with others and deal with the things they said or they way they acted in the end. I just like that we had teenagers acting like teenagers. I also loved the hockey stuff. I am who I am. It didn't dive too deeply into the hockey scene but I got enough to make me happy. Especially at the end when we got to see some hockey newbs watch hockey for the first time. The relationship between Alix and Ezra was sweet and tentative but their relationship wasn't a make or break on this comic for me. There were a couple of panels I wanted to screenshot because they were so adorable.

I didn't 100% love the art style. I get migraines so reading a mostly black, white, and blue comic on an electronic device wasn't great for me. I ended up pulling out my old blue light glasses to try to stave off a headache. That's not really the fault of the author, the publisher, or anyone really. Just a fact of trying to read the comic. It wouldn't be a problem at all if I had read it physically.

Overall, this was so cute, so sweet, and just enough hockey to keep me happy. This isn't the first thing I've read with Faith Erin Hicks's name attached and it definitely won't be the last.