Cheer Up

I got this from the library, read half of it on the way home then immediately sat and finished it, then ordered a copy from the local comic shop. Yesterday I picked up that copy and read it in one sitting, and I love it even more than I did before. I'm not someone who dismisses any sport out of hand but I'm also not your typical target market for a book about cheerleading, but also cheer is really only the structure on which the story is laid, and I am very much the target market for a story about people-pleasing trans girls and smart-but-grumpy lesbians rekindling a friendship, learning from each other and (spoiler, but not really) falling in love, so, there ya go.

It's not flawless (nothing is), but damn it is perfect. Crystal's writing is excellent - I love these characters so much, they're full of life and the characterization through storytelling is so well written, I found them very believable and endearing. I love Bebe so much and I want to hug her and also be her. Annie is delightful and hilarious and complicated and good. Their friendship and its arc, their learning from each other and growing and becoming better, stronger people, is the core of the book and it is wonderful. Believable and engaging and utterly endearing. Loved it, it made me cry and laugh and melt.

Val Wise did an incredible job illustrating - the art so skillfully tells its part of the story, the medium is used so fully. I'm not much of a comics person (yet), but there are so many excellent facial expressions, the paneling and style variations are used very effectively, and the background details are delightful. There's a whole spread without any dialog that very effectively gives a deeper introduction to the characters, and the many secondary characters are all given the attention they deserve and the story has so much more life because of it.

Okay, so a couple main things people might dislike: the pacing can be a little jarring, which is probably unavoidable in its current form because it's pretty short but covers a lot of ground. It's 120 pages, this read took an hour including taking pictures of my favorite panels (which were a lot) and livetexting them, and the story follows two main character arcs though literally an entire school year, with a lot of character development (of the main and side characters!) wedged in there. I think overall it's managed very well all considered, but there are a few places where it feels a little rushed. Also I want more time with these characters because I love them so much!

It's also very much a story about one main character's experience as a recently-out trans person, and it's hard to please everyone when telling these stories, I think - the story is too trite or puts characters through needless trauma or has unrealistic conflicts. Side characters are either unrealistically accepting or caricatures of conservatism. I imagine trying to write realistic dialogue is even more of a nightmare than usual! So you can find things to complain about probably, but overall I think that tightrope is excellently balanced. Which is certainly largely because the author is herself a trans woman (of course she is, you think I'm out here reading trans stories by cis people?) but it's still a difficult writing feat and I think it's done well. Similarly, the illustrator does an excellent job drawing the pre-hormonal trans girl protagonist, handling scenes specifically about her appearance and makeup deftly (the illustrator is, no surprise, also trans).

Also: if you were looking for a trans/lesbian Check, Please!, this will be disappointingly short but otherwise pretty much hits the mark on most other points I think. It has much fewer pies, but it DOES include baking as an expression of affection, so, you should probably pick it up.

I loved this book, it was a delight, I know not everyone has the same tastes or is looking for the same things but also it is very short, you can go read it at the library without even checking it out, so if this is in your zone (and even if not), I say it's definitely worth a read.