7 Good Reasons Not to Grow Up

Digital Review Copy (DRC) provided by Edelweiss+ and Scholastic Graphix in exchange for an honest review. Look at this amazing cover! A colorful middle school crew and catchy title, I eagerly downloaded this graphic novel as a huge fan of middle grade titles and the format in general. I loved the welcoming, shelf appeal, the bright, primary color panels, multiple genders and races, and engaging pop culture premise, eager to see where this realistic story about a social media phenomenon trying to keep up the vibe and appearances at school while hiding a big personal secret would take me. Started strong. And then midway through a promising start, I lost the connections to the large cast of characters. The humor disappeared. Solid characters behaved in inconsistent, disappointing ways. There were illogical, out-of-character decisions made that were in sharp contrast to the character arcs at the beginning of the story. My son put it like this, "It was so good until it wasn't." This needed way more editing and development of the main characters to match the truly dynamic structure of the comic.