I’ve been reading Alice Oseman’s Heartstopper since it was a webcomic, and now own all four of the published graphic novel volumes. I’ve binged the Netflix series through several times and am incredibly excited that it is getting at least two more seasons. This story is full of wholesomeness and it brings warmth to my heart, so when I was in Booka bookshop recently and spotted Nick and Charlie I immediately picked it up.
This book picks up the two boys just as Nick is finishing sixth form and about to head off to university, while Charlie has a year left of his A Levels. The two are both in their own feelings about the change ahead of them and the novella follows them working it out.
As ever, Oseman manages to inhabit the intensity of teenagerdom with incredible ease. It’s so easy to forget as an adult what it was actually like to be that age, the way that it felt, the claustrophobia of small decisions. The age this novella drops in on is also so particular – that feeling of being on the precipice of impending adulthood, of closeness to independence, and the mixture of excitement and terror that can excite. It was really interesting to read these characters outside of comic format, and it was seamlessly done. I loved that the book is also full of doodles and illustrations as well, which just give it that feeling of continuity and connection to the graphic novels while letting it be a different form.
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A Book or Ten 