You Belong Right here
First Second
Sara Phoebe Miller, Morgan Beem
Might 22, 2025
Net Unique
Sara Phoebe Miller’s debut graphic novel is an impressive younger grownup story that confidently captures emotions of adolescent isolation and angst with out ever tumbling into melodrama. It follows a suburban seventeen-year-old named Essie Rosen as she navigates heartbreak and thwarted ambitions on her seek for identification. Alongside the way in which You Belong Right here deftly handles some weighty subject material like monetary insecurity and substance abuse with subtlety and class.
Miller is a veteran comedian e-book editor who labored for Vertigo and ran DC’s Expertise Growth Writers and Artists Workshops. Her storytelling expertise actually exhibits, particularly because it pertains to her collaboration with illustrator Morgan Beem (Surprise Lady Black and Gold, Swamp Factor: Twin Branches). They make an excellent workforce. Maybe essentially the most placing inventive resolution in You Belong Right here is the selection to paint these panels in a wash of monochromatic blues. The watercolor-like shading and expressive body-styling of the characters offers the reader a way that Essie’s life is in a continuing state of flux, all the time transferring and altering.
You Belong Right here is an ideal e-book for any younger individual in your life of their early teenage years in search of a coming-of-age narrative with identifiable conditions, life like relationships, and some romantic ups and downs. It’s additionally a wonderful first outing from Miller. Hopefully, there’s loads extra to return from her. (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250822307/youbelonghere/)
Writer score: 7.5/10