Juliet Takes a Breath Graphic Novel Review

Um, I think I expected a little too much from this one...

The graphic novel adaptation of Juliet Takes a Breath by Gabby Rivera (and illustrated by Celia Moscote) is about 19-year old Juliet, who is queer, Latina, and lives in the Bronx. She gets accepted to do a writing internship with her favorite queer feminist author, Harlowe Brisbane. After coming out to her mother as a lesbian goes wrong, and her girlfriend Lanie starts to seem distant with her, Juliet hops on the first flight to Portland, Oregon to work with Harlowe.

Harlowe lets Juliet room and board at her house, and she gets familiar with people in her social circle, mostly Harlowe's ex named Max and her new girlfriend Zaira (they first meet at a writer's club). Juliet also goes a lot to the library to do research and gets close with an intern there named Kira. Juliet is happy to be surrounded by a lot of like-minded people at first, but Harlowe is probably not who she seems to be...

This story did a lot of things that I liked (such as the discussions of being queer and POC), but it also did a lot of things that I didn't particularly like (for example, there was this one part where Harlowe offers Juliet a joint to smoke..!?). While there were some parts I did get a little emotional, it also feels like a lot of things were heavily glossed over. I dunno, something just feels like it was missing from becoming a new favorite. 

Because of all this, I gave it 3 stars. It's not a terrible book, but I think there are better options out there. 

However, I think this might just be because of the fact that this is a graphic novel adaptation of a prose-written book, so some things might have been left out in order to make the story work in graphic novel format (or maybe to make it less long, because this graphic novel is surprisingly thin!). Sometime I need to get my hands on the original book and see how it compares. Maybe it's better? I hope!