My Heart in Braille

by Joris Chamblain, Pascal Ruter, Anne-Lise Nalin

Genres: Graphic Novels, Young Adult
Pages: 74
Rating:

Synopsis:

Victor loves vintage cars and belting out songs in his garage band, but school is harder for him and he seems to always say the wrong thing. When he meets the cello-playing, straight-A student Marie-Jo, the two strike up an unlikely friendship, and before long both his grades and his attitude improve. But when Marie-Jo confesses a terrible secret to him, Victor will have to return the favor and do a little rescuing of his own.

There’s some pretty art in Joris Chamberlain’s My Heart in Braille, but I didn’t really think much of the story. I gather it’s actually based on a novel, which might make more sense of it; it didn’t really feel like it’d been written/structured to be a graphic novel to begin with.

Overall, it feels like there’s some lacking context for the characters and like certain aspects of the story just get totally dropped, or elided. There isn’t strong character development or relationship development, and Victor’s personal development (and coping with his ?ADHD) is essentially ditched in favour of Marie’s feel-good story about getting to go to music school.

Overall, not strong at all.

Rating: 1/5 (“didn’t like it”)