Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
A guy arrives with hand-picked flowers at the door of his date and is greeted by a big bouquet of blooms she buys for him. It seemed like the sweetest thing, but the guy doesn’t think so… The graphic novel ’12 Reasons Why I Love Her’ by Jamie S. Rich and Joëlle Jones dives through the relationship of Gwen and Evan, who have a mutual love for music and movie but are quite different in their outlook towards romance.
The narration is non-linear, the story unfolds in flashbacks that aren’t in sequence. So, chapter one starts with Gwen and Evan’s second meeting and first official date, while the novel ends with how they met. Because of the non-linear storytelling, a few times it felt like a new character was gracing the pages and I had to back to confirm that the illustrations were in-fact representing the same leads.
The artwork by Joëlle Jones is the best thing about ‘12 Reasons Why I Love Her’, it’s expressive and reminiscent of old newspaper comic strips. The characters aren’t fleshed out well and Evan is a jerk, especially in the introductory chapters, so I didn’t think he deserved a second chance by Gwen. It’s a relationship doomed from the beginning, Gwen gives Evan a second change despite concluding he is a ‘repressed jock asshole’ on their first formal date. It’s a case of a red flag slapping someone on the face and yet them deciding to give things a shot. An eventual break-up is looming around the corner for such relationships.
One of the primary reasons I got myself a copy of this graphic novel was because ‘A Boy & A Girl’ by Jamie S. Rich had been a fun read. But ‘12 Reasons Why I Love Her’ never gets fun, except for the last chapter, which draws an exciting first meeting between the lovers. So I am giving brownie points for the art and the cute ‘strangers to lovers’ beginning.
It’s a 3/5 from me.
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