The Bottom Line
Pros
- Beautifully drawn.
- Captures the challenges of a teen's discovery of her sexual orientation.
- Certain aspects will ring very true for young lesbians.
- A classic love story with twists.
Cons
- The comic is not yet completed & may leave you wanting more.
- The use of race is not as skillfully done as I would have hoped.
Description
- A comic about teen lesbians attending Catholic school and falling in love.
- Loosely based, on the Cinderella story, YU+ME follows Fiona as she comes out of her shell and discovers she is a lesbian.
- The reader gets to know the main characters intimately and quickly becomes wrapped up in their lives.
Guide Review - YU+ME:dream - A Lesbian Teen Comic Love Story
YU+ME:dream tells the story of Fiona, a lesbian teen attending Catholic school.
Fiona has a miserable home life and is tormented at school, both by the nuns who teach her, as well as the by popular girls who deliberately get her in trouble.
Finally, in her senior year, things being to change when two students suddenly transfer to school. Jake, a gay boy sent to the school to "straighten him out" and Lia, a beautiful blond who not only is Fiona's neighbor, but also her classmate.
Fiona's feeling for Lia, and their subsequent interactions help her figure out that she is indeed a lesbian.
Loosely modeled after the Cinderella fairy tale, YU+ME:dream comes complete with an evil stepmother, mean sisters (in the form of classmates) and a fairy godmother who appears as Fiona's conscience.
That's the part I had trouble with. Fiona's conscience is black and speaks in what the comic calls eubonics and the voice of a sassy black girl. Except for her, the only other black characters are a school nurse and a geeky, angry boy who has a crush on Fiona.
Though I raced through the entire comic (which is not so easy to do when reading online and waiting for pages to load!), I felt that the portrayal of the conscience took me out of the story. I am sure Gedris had no negative motives, but the character seemed stereotypical and somewhat misplaced.
That being said, I am eagerly awaiting more chapters in the story and found myself disappointed when it ended.
