The story is framed in letters that Freddy writes to a national advice columnist, and those letters frame the art to show us the lens Freddy’s viewing Laura Dean through. Laura Dean is, if I may say so, an actually perfect character in a high school novel. The cat pencil case? The clock in the corner? Doodle chewing on the end of her hoodie’s’s drawstrings? I remember this so much.

Here’s a panel of Freddy and her best friend Doodle sitting in class, preoccupied. She makes use of numerous stage-setting panels in between those with dialogue, so we get a sense of these kids, the things on their bedroom floors, their diner orders, their small gestures and mannerisms. Rosemary Valero O’Connell’s art for this book is exceptional and contributes so much to the mood and texture of the story, including my position that these creators remember being a teenager. (Spoiler for that relationship: It won’t.)

It’s one of these universal being-a-teenager stories done with extraordinary sensitivity and loveliness: Freddy is in love with someone flighty and unavailable, and she keeps on thinking that if she does everything just right (or maybe is a slightly different person), the relationship will become what she wants it to be. Having read Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me, I stand by that position. My primary memory from reading This One Summer is that the Tamaki cousins, unlike very, very, very many adults, have not forgotten what it is like to be a kid. I love this book so much that it’s going to be difficult for me to describe it dispassionately, but I shall try. this is the cover of the sweetest cutest book in the whole world No matter how many times Laura Dean proves herself to be an unreliable jerkface, Freddy carries on wanting her, even at the expense of her other relationships. Endcaps work! Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me is about a girl called Freddy whose extremely cool sort-of girlfriend, Laura Dean, keeps breaking up with her. Tl dr, this is the sweetest book I’ve read all year, and I see no prospect of any book knocking it out of that spot in the back half of the year, and you absolutely must read itĪfter numerous sightings of Mariko Tamaki’s latest, Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me, I broke down and bought it from an indie bookstore near the beach.

Laura dean keeps breaking up with me 2