Justin du Coeur reviewed Sweetness Between Us by Sarah Winifred Searle
A story of high-school romance, diabetes, and vampirism
4 stars
A sweet, educational, mildly queer coming-of-age fantasy graphic novel.
One protagonist is Perley -- from a family of farmers and crafters, leader of the high school knitting club. (And a really fine example that you can be queer in spirit even if you're neither gay nor trans.) His life was recently disrupted when he found out the hard way that has Type 1 Diabetes, and he's now catching up in school and learning how to cope with the disease.
He shares his catch-up process with Amandine, a fellow junior in this small Maine town. She comes from a distinguished vampiric family, and was prematurely inducted into vampirism to save her life. She's also having to learn coping techniques -- particularly important for a vampire who is also a fairly committed vegan.
They become close friends, and develop a measure of inter-dependency when they discover that she can taste his blood …
A sweet, educational, mildly queer coming-of-age fantasy graphic novel.
One protagonist is Perley -- from a family of farmers and crafters, leader of the high school knitting club. (And a really fine example that you can be queer in spirit even if you're neither gay nor trans.) His life was recently disrupted when he found out the hard way that has Type 1 Diabetes, and he's now catching up in school and learning how to cope with the disease.
He shares his catch-up process with Amandine, a fellow junior in this small Maine town. She comes from a distinguished vampiric family, and was prematurely inducted into vampirism to save her life. She's also having to learn coping techniques -- particularly important for a vampire who is also a fairly committed vegan.
They become close friends, and develop a measure of inter-dependency when they discover that she can taste his blood sugar levels pretty accurately -- saving him money on supplies, and giving her a tiny bit of entirely-voluntary energy boost.
There's no high drama here, nor many fantasy tropes: it's a pretty down-to-earth story about navigating high school relationships, where one of the main characters happens to be a young vampire. The characters are generally realistic (including all the awkwardness that being realistic about high school implies), and the book is pretty educational about diabetes without ever sliding too far into being didactic.
