I like that this delved into historical tensions between the alien races, and the character’s reactions to seeing each other’s ‘alien’ forms was really interesting. It’s a solid beginning, and I would definitely love to read the nest instalment.

Some things I didn’t enjoy as much were the characters faces sometimes looked quite flat, and some of the expressions made were overly cartoonish during moments when things should have been serious. The alien designs were pretty cool and made up for this mostly, though.

This was a fun read! I loved the diversity of all the different extraterrestrial beings, and I liked the cliffhanger ending! I know some kids who will be very excited about this series.

I was so in deep in this book and then it just ended and I was so sad! The characters personalities are so fun, and the conflict in the book was really well done. I really want more, and do feel like it just sort of...ended all of the sudden which was a bummer. The world building was solid and the art was fun!

What a fun read! Tara Smith is a girl with a focused future. Set in her ways, she knows exactly what her future holds, until everything changes. Tara's life has been a lie and she finds herself in a new school and making new and interesting friends for the first time. The book hits all the notes of friendship, resiliency and figuring out how to fit in.

My students LOVE great graphic novels and I know several of them that would DEVOUR this story. Can't wait to see what comes next.

Getting Comfortable in Your Own Skin

This is a definite two-fer. Well imagined, and often surprising, alien characters. And, complicated teen girl high school drama with an extra-terrestrial twist. For me, both angles worked well. This book manages to touch on pretty much every teen issue you could think of, and earns bonus points by cleverly, if unapologetically and obviously, also hitting every adolescent metaphor on this or any other planet.

As we open Tara learns that she's a kidnapped alien who has been mind wiped and led to believe she's human. She's not. She's an alien in disguise. So, she is not who she thought she was, she does not really look like she thinks she does, she doesn't know what she really is, and she is in for a surprise when her restraint bracelet is switched off and she finds out what she physically looks like. In one fell swoop we get every identity crisis, body image, uncertain future, parent issue, find-yourself theme dropped on poor Tara. It is a testament to the way she's written and presented that most of the time she is an appealing, relateable and sympathetic character; even when she's a jerk, which happens fairly frequently, one can relate and empathize.

On top of this Tara has been whisked off to a school for teen girls from other alien worlds who are in pretty much the same boat as is she. Now she needs to deal with teachers, roommates, friends, frenemies, and how all of their issues affect her and are affected by her. She makes and loses friends, repairs relationships, and stumbles through every possible high school drama. An amusing late addition alien friend, who has been educated about American Earth only through study of teen TV shows and soap operas, enthusiastically points out all of the opportunities for high drama, and this cheerful and deadpan pal acts as a sort of Greek chorus to caption the various stages of Tara's increasingly antic and erratic high school life.

Sometimes the going is a bit slow and heavy, but the book has a lot of energy. There's even a fair amount of action. Tara really is engaging, and everything moves along briskly. There seemed to be an upbeat and optimistic vibe underlying the whole project that kept the story from becoming dreary or grim. You get the sense that Tara will be O.K., and everyone will survive high school, and maybe that's the best message of all.

(Please note that I received a free advance will-self-destruct-in-x-days Adobe Digital copy of this book without a review requirement, or any influence regarding review content should I choose to post a review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.)

More like 3.5-ish
School for Extraterrestrial Girls #1: Girl on Fire follows a 15 year old Tara Smith. Tara has always known she's destined to be extraordinary but even she couldn't have guessed how extraordinary she actually is. After being captured by the government, Tara must learn how to adapt to the new school, find friends and learn to accept her alien form.
Who would have thought aliens also have teenage problems? There's drama, there's friendship, there's some action. And there's Kat - the cat like being that loves american soap operas and doesn't understand the term "personal space". I love Kat. Can we get more of Kat, please?

Jamie Noguchi's expressive faces and dynamic angles do an amazing job of communicating the complex emotions experienced by the (almost exclusively female) cast of characters. I cringed along with Tara as she made the same kinds of awkward mistakes I remember making in highschool (and I didn't have the excuse of having just discovered I was a fire-generating alien reptile). The social consciousness you expect from Jeremy Whitley's work is front and center here, doing what speculative fiction does best by giving us a view of the issues we face every day through the lens of the fantastic (or in this case, extraterrestrial).

I was sold on reading this as soon as I saw the author’s name. Princeless is super charming and you should read that too if you haven’t, This volume introduces a world where a sufficiently advanced technology allows aliens to hide among humans. The technology is so perfect that a teen girl didn’t even know that she wasn’t human. I look forward to seeing more of this world as the series continues.

I would probably give this a 3.5-star rating if I could, but rounded up to 4 here.
A fast and fun story about a girl that suddenly finds out she is an alien! I really loved the concept that everyone stays in human disguises and that they don't necessarily reflect how their alien form looks like. I also adored that there is a lot of good representation here and so many different and fun characters! The only thing I didn't like was how the conflict with the "parents" lasted like 2 seconds, and I wished it was a little bit more dramatic. Overall good comic tho!

trigger warning
<spoiler> kidnapping, being orphaned, genocide, racism </spoiler>

Tara is leading a very boring life with a strict routine in order to have an extraordinary future and become an astronaut.
At least, that's what her life was, until she discovers she's not human.

This was fun!
Tara gets the choice: Either she is shipped back to her home planet or she joins the school for extraterrestial girls. If she does the latter, after three years she is deemed safe for public, which would be a good thing since she turns to burn when emotional.

There are the usual problems of changing schools in the middle of the year and having to find new friends while being awkward, but also conflicts due to being from a race that might be at war with someone else's people.

I really like the aspect of having a school full of pupils in which everyone has different abilities, and see how these play out. Apart from the daily slice of life, we have an overarching plot, but I won't say anything about that. Look for yourself.

This was short and sweet. I would not go out of my way to read on, but if I should stumble upon further issues I'd carry on.

I recieved a copy of this book in exchange for a honest review.

Three and a bit rounded up to four.

This a fast, fun read with a lot of tropes that I like - boarding school, sci-fi, and found family. While the section in the middle, as Tara figures things out, was a bit difficult to read, it got exponentially better once Kat came into the picture. I was also really intrigued by the character of Agent Stone, and I look forward to learning more about all the characters in the future.

If I have a nit-pick other than that it would be that I wished Kat and her sister were drawn a little cuter - I mean, come on, they're LITERAL CAT PEOPLE. But otherwise the artwork was great, and I appreciated that the characters were really diverse, from the inclusion of a hijab to a South East Asian teacher.

A really fun story.

There are all kinds of extraterrestrials living on Earth with human disguises, and there is a school just for them! Tara didn't know she was an extraterrestrial, and her whole world is turned upside down when she finds out. Or maybe it turns upside right. Being at a school with other extraterrestrials gives her the chance to make friends and learn more about herself. This was a fun read, and I like the lessons intertwined in the story. The only thing I didn't like was how quickly the conflict was resolved. Like, it was only a panel!