Saturday, February 25, 2012

Review: Friends With Boys by Faith Erin Hicks

Friends With Boys by Faith Erin Hicks
Review by Noelle: February 25, 2012
Published February 28, 2012 by First Second
Goodreads • Buy at Amazon

Attention: You can read the entire comic for a limited time at Faith Erin Hicks' website Friends With Boys. Also, reading her creative process at the bottom of this page was pretty cool.

Friends With Boys is a web comic (soon to be graphic novel) by Faith Erin Hicks featuring previously home-schooled Maggie McKay's experiences adjusting to public high school, making friends outside her family and oh yeah...figuring out why that pesky ghost is following her around.

Maggie is a likeable, sympathetic heroine who is complemented nicely by her charismatic brothers.  The sibling dynamics of both the McKay brood and Maggie's new friends Lucy and Alistair are my favorite parts of the story.  The characters' interests really filled out the story nicely and were fun to read about to boot. 

Hicks excels at communicating emotions with no words, whether it's her beautifully articulate facial expressions or wide framed scenery shots.  Maggie's high school map and field notes are both hilarious and dead-on. The characters are all expressive and charmingly rendered. 

Some elements of the story are left open-ended but I enjoyed filling in the blanks myself about the ghost and what she meant in relation to what Maggie was going through with her mom. Maybe that's just what the author intended or maybe I have an overactive imagination.

Rating: 3.5/5 stars.  Friends With Boys has some pretty enjoyable funny, spooky and poignant moments. 

(Sidenote: I'm totally going to try to make Magsby be a nickname for YAA Maggie until she tells me to stop trying to make Fetch happen.)
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2 comments:

  1. Vegan YA NerdsFebruary 25, 2012 at 6:55 PM

    I hardly ever read comics or graphic novels but I have been given a few GNs and I always appreciate the time it's taken to draw all the images and how quick they are to read, FWB sounds fun!

    p.s I lol'd at the Mean Girls reference ;)

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  2. YA AnonymousFebruary 26, 2012 at 1:39 AM

    I just finished reading the book and Noelle, I now DEMAND to be called Magsby. :)

    Mandee, this was my first graphic novel and it was actually pretty good.

    -M

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