Friends Forever

** spoiler alert ** This volume shows brutally how toxic her home life was. It shows how misogyny, patriarchy, and religion conspires to keep children, especially girls, in their place. A side story is how Shannon participated in theater. While it didn't end up being her calling, it did end up being a safe space for her when so many other places in her life weren't. http://pussreboots.com/blog/2022/comm...

*4.5

The third graphic novel in a series by Shannon Hale. In this book we have skipped ahead to eighth grade with flashbacks to seventh grade. Shannon has made new "better" friends from her drama class. She is still worried about fitting in and wondering if boys like her. This confusion comes fro undiagnosed anxiety and depression. This graphic novel is warm, funny (in parts) but mainly very real. Shannon reminds me of myself at that age and I wish a graphic novel like this existed when I was in junior high. I would have felt less alone knowing that there were more girls out there worrying about the same things. I would recommend all of Shannon Hale's Friends series to any tween and young teen struggling to fit in and worrying about all kinds of relationships platonic, familial, and romantic.

3.5ish stars? This made me feel so sad for 8th grade Shannon, her undiagnosed OCD and anxiety (as learned in the authors notes at the end) was so bad towards the end of the book, and it reminded me a little of fourteen year old me, tbh. The god parts were slightly heavy handed, but possibly just bc I’m in a very post-religion part of my life so I felt uncomfortable about it 🤷🏻‍♀️