Chrissy’s Review: Honor Girl by Maggie Thrash

Honor Girl
written by Maggie Thrash
published by Candlewick Press, 2015

find it here: (affiliate links) Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Book Depository, Goodreads

Did I enjoy this book: I did enjoy this book. It is my first graphic memoir. It isn’t a book that I would have picked up off the shelf in a bookstore to read, but I won this copy during this year’s Armchair BEA. And the book surprised me.

Honor Girl is a quick, fun read. I read it in a few hours. It is definitely a coming of age, finding oneself, teen confusion book. It seemed like it was written and drawn by a mid-teen girl. The graphics are better than anything I could ever draw. There is nothing pretty or glorified: the story is what it is, and it is true to real life.  I think that’s what I liked most about it.

Would I recommend it: Yes, I would–if you like graphic memoirs and coming of age stories.

About the book – from Goodreads: All-girl camp. First love. First heartbreak. At once romantic and devastating, brutally honest and full of humor, this graphic-novel memoir is a debut of the rarest sort.

Maggie Thrash has spent basically every summer of her fifteen-year-old life at the one-hundred-year-old Camp Bellflower for Girls, set deep in the heart of Appalachia. She’s from Atlanta, she’s never kissed a guy, she’s into Backstreet Boys in a really deep way, and her long summer days are full of a pleasant, peaceful nothing . . . until one confounding moment. A split-second of innocent physical contact pulls Maggie into a gut-twisting love for an older, wiser, and most surprising of all (at least to Maggie), female counselor named Erin. But Camp Bellflower is an impossible place for a girl to fall in love with another girl, and Maggie’s savant-like proficiency at the camp’s rifle range is the only thing keeping her heart from exploding. When it seems as if Erin maybe feels the same way about Maggie, it’s too much for both Maggie and Camp Bellflower to handle, let alone to understand.