'Linon and Garance are best friends with very different ideas about love. To get to the bottom of what all this romance stuff is really about, they decide to conduct an investigation into some of the older students at their middle school. Why are certain kids more popular than others? Why do some already have a “bad reputation” by the 8th grade? Why is everyone so obsessed with appearances? Along the way, the pair discover that, for best friends who are supposed to share everything, they’ve both been keeping some pretty big secrets of their own.'
Love is a complex thing, it can be the best thing in the world, and it can be absolutely soul crushing. It's fun, its messy, its the thing people strive for, it can be the cause of and solution to problems. It's big and complex; and I think quite a lot of adults would struggle to rightly put into words all of the explanations about what love is. So imagine how hard it must be for kids.
School of Love shines a light onto how it can be for kids coming into their teens, discovering that they have all these messy feelings for other people, and how often it can be hugely confusing for them. This story is explored through two best friends, Linon and Garance; two girls who look at their lovesick classmates around them and think 'huh?'.
Over the course of the book the two of them decide that they want to try and figure out love, to work out what it is, how it effects people, and to pin down its complexities. Easier said than done. Luckily for the two girls, the school is absolutely rife with couples for them to study. This begins a series of investigations that see the pair hiding in bushes, sneaking around buildings, and getting lovesick teens to reveal their darkest secrets.
The events of the book are actually quite funny and at times even delightful. By trying to figure out what love is all about from a bunch of kids Linon and Garance get a very skewed view of the topic. They see couples who fall in and out of love fast; with the longest couple in the school holding the record at twelve days! Things get heated at times, and there's even a case of two best friends literally trying to tear each others hair out over a boy they both like who neither of them have even spoken to.
But it's not all weird and wonderful displays of love, as the book at times takes a much more grounded and serious approach. They talk to the most popular girl in their year, the girl that all the boys think is the prettiest, who they all want to date. It turns out that she actually hates the fact that people go mushy over her looks and have no interest in her as a person, thinking that she's some pretty airhead. This is something she uses to her advantage, however, as she allows people to underestimate her so that she can secretly study physics, and improve her brain. The two of them also talk to the goth girl, a girl with a reputation for being sexy and easy to sleep with, discovering that she was essentially sexually assaulted, and because the boy who did it boasted about it she got a reputation as a slut; something she rages against with her alternative appearance and reluctance to make friends.
Part of the reason the two girls want to make their study into love is due to the secrets that they two of them are holding; and I thought that I'd figured out what that was, but ended up being completely wrong. I was thinking that it was going to be revealed that they were trying to figure out love because they both had a crush on the other, and that they'd figure out how to express those feelings. It turns out I was completely off the mark, as Linon ends up hooking up with a boy whilst Garance is dealing with the loss of love between her parents and their looming divorce.
The lack of queer representation is actually my biggest gripe with the book. There's only ever one line where it's hinted at that anyone might be anything other than straight, but other than that there's nothing. With a book set in modern times, where being LGBTQ+ in school is much more open and accepted, and with the story being about love I was honestly shocked that there wasn't a single queer character, or discussion about same sex attraction. It left it feeling like we only actually explored one time, heterosexual avenue of love and relationships.
Outside of the story the book looks absolutely beautiful. The artist on the book, Maya, is phenomenal. Every single panel of the book is a work of art. The detail is great, and you can spend ages looking through all the backgrounds and picking out tiny bits and pieces. The characters are all well designed and look unique enough that you're instantly able to recognise who people are. And the colours are wonderful, working perfectly with the line work to make this bright, vibrant art that leaps off the page. This is easily some of the best art I've seen in a comic in a long while; and I'd happily read anything that Maya works on.
School of Love: Secrets of the Heart is a fun, engaging read with some interesting characters, some fun moments, some deep introspection, and some wonderful art. Whether you're a youngster trying to figure out love, or simply looking for a fun book to spend the day with, I'm sure that this is one that will entertain.
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