Name: Molly
Grade: 11th
Title: Heartstopper: Volume 1
Author: Alice Oseman
Published in: 2020
Pages: 263
Rating: 5 stars
“Heartstopper: Volume 1” is the first volume of the Heartstopper graphic novel series and follows openly-gay Charlie Spring and rugby player Nick Nelson on their journey of friendship and more. Charlie is a year 10 at Truham Boys school while Nick is a year 11, and when they meet, their friendship progresses quickly and soon they are playing rugby together and hanging out outside of school. For Charlie Spring, this friendship becomes more and he begins to fall for Nick Nelson, the “openly-straight” rugby boy, however, what he doesn’t know, is that Nick is beginning to feel things for Charlie as well. He may not know what exactly he is feeling, but something other than friendship is in the back of his mind. The first volume focuses on their budding friendship and Charlie’s feelings for a boy he believes is straight.
This graphic novel was amazing. I loved the depiction of the story and how fast of a read it was. I love how their friendship was portrayed, as well as the fact they embody the friends-to-lovers trope. This graphic novel gets five stars because I love Nick and Charlie’s story and I had been wanting to read it for a really long time and it definitely lived up to my expectations. Alice Oseman is extremely talented and everyone should read Heartstopper. My favorite character is Charlie Spring because his story makes the readers sympathize with him as he used to be bullied for being gay and he is an overall really sweet character. He may overthink a lot, but he is a great friend and will for sure make a good boyfriend. I love seeing Nick and Charlie’s relationship form which made me super happy because they are really cute together.
I would recommend this book because I think it is a really good coming-of-age story. I loved that it was a graphic novel, so if you like those, you should definitely give this one a try. I read a lot of LGBT+ centered books, so if you read books like that too or want to read more of that, heartstopper is the perfect book to read. I watched the new Heartstopper show on Netflix after I read this one and I liked being able to compare the two, so if you have watched Heartstopper, you should also read the graphic novels. If you were planning on watching Heartstopper, read the first two volumes of the Heartstopper graphic novels first because although they may differ somewhat, there are a lot of similar aspects, so if you want to avoid getting spoilers, I would read the books first.
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