WardenRed reviewed Forest Hills Bootleg Society by Nicole Goux
None
5 stars
Forest Hills could be described as a “small town,“ which is true, but doesn’t begin to examine the depths of the repressive and toxic culture it produces, despite having recently entered the new millennium.
If I had to describe this graphic novel in one sentence, I’d go with, “An exploration of a friendship falling apart.“ Like with any dissolving friendship, there’s a lot of stuff going into it: first love gone wrong, problems with parents, religious guilt, small town angst, money problems, peer pressure, teenage hierarchies, and a daring plot to get rich by selling illegal copies of hentai anime. That last one was the part of the blurb that intrigued me the most, but it’s the rest of it that made the book fly by.
I really loved the art—the style reminded me a bit of Tillie Walden’s works. The format was also cool, with the story essentially …
Forest Hills could be described as a “small town,“ which is true, but doesn’t begin to examine the depths of the repressive and toxic culture it produces, despite having recently entered the new millennium.
If I had to describe this graphic novel in one sentence, I’d go with, “An exploration of a friendship falling apart.“ Like with any dissolving friendship, there’s a lot of stuff going into it: first love gone wrong, problems with parents, religious guilt, small town angst, money problems, peer pressure, teenage hierarchies, and a daring plot to get rich by selling illegal copies of hentai anime. That last one was the part of the blurb that intrigued me the most, but it’s the rest of it that made the book fly by.
I really loved the art—the style reminded me a bit of Tillie Walden’s works. The format was also cool, with the story essentially getting told through the POV of an unknown omniscient narrator with unbridled access to all the four girls’ innermost thoughts, constantly adding small comments about other characters and places in town. That format is a pretty cool factor adding to the story, constantly adding interesting juxtapositions for the main characters’ experiences.
Speaking of the main characters, all four girls are complex and fully realized characters with their own flaws, pain points, and dreams. It’s hard to agree with a lot of the choices they make, but easy to understand why they make them. Each of them is conflicted and messy in all the ways teens can be, and some parts of their intertwining stories really sent me back to my own teenage years.