I had loved the concept but I got bored pretty quickly with the What If game. This was a just okay for me.

Thank you Netgalley for an e-arc of this book in exchange for an honest review.

First, look at that cover! It is such a fun and beautiful piece of artwork. This is what drew me into looking at "What if We Were..." in the first place ( I am a huge sucker for judging books by their covers - hasn't really failed me yet!). Second this is just a really fun and quirky coming of age story. Nathalie and Marie have such vivid imaginations that its hard not to want to play the game with them. And who doesn't love a little love story. I enjoyed the story and the characters so much! 10/10 would highly recommend.

Love this graphic novel. Full of wit, humor, and a feminist punch. The art is adorable and very well done.

What If We Were... is such a fun little book. I loved that even though the short clips were all on different topics, there was still an overarching story for the main characters. I really do hope there is another collection in the future though, as the ending was a complete non-ending and I need more!

A collection of vignettes rather than a story built on a plot, What If We Were is about two best friends playing an imagination game together.

Because there is not the same level of depth and emersion that you find in a story that is a cohesive whole, this book did not grab me. The art is fun and the characters are likeable, but that's about all this book has to offer for me.

I would like to thank NetGalley for the e-book ARC copy of What If We Were by Axelle Lenoir.

The concept was cute but it was forgettable and unoriginal. The main characters were more like background characters. There was absolutely no plot to speak of. I would not recommend this book at all.

2 out of 5 stars.

Nathalie and Marie have been best friends since grade school. They have a game they play, "What if we were...," where one of them chooses a topic (in a band, spies, the most brilliant scientist in the world), and they take turns saying what their lives would be like. It's cute and imaginative, and the kind of thing the reader has likely done with a bestie. We get all kinds of goofy fun friendship feels floating around, and it's just sweet. As the story progresses, we learn that Nathalie has a crush on someone, but is too shy to do anything about it. When Jane (the crush) approaches Marie to ask about Nathalie, Marie starts to nudge Nathalie into taking action finally. Now we have all kinds of coming of age feels, figuring out who you are feels, first love feels, and outside looking in feels. Marie is happy her best friend has found love, but she senses the effects that will have on their friendship, and thinks about how life in general will likely cause them to drift apart in the future, and oh my heart! Those feels hit really close to home, and I'm not crying, you're crying! So, yeah, this was a great story that totally snuck up on me and put me through all the emotions; the characters are great, I so wanna hang with these girls, and having a fly on the wall view of their friendship is adorable and geeky/dorky good times. Jane is cool and weird too, and fits in well with the two, and I'm hoping the story will continue and explore that aspect, the entrance of a third person in a friendship when the new person is a significant other, and how that delicate balance is struck. I loved the art- Marie and Natalie's personalities are palpable, and Lenoir really makes them come to life with her quirky style. Absolutely recommended.

#WhatIfWeWere #NetGalley

Loved the illustrations in this graphic novel. The storyline is very loose, but there is an overarching story mixed in with all of the girls' rounds of "What if...." It's just a fun, easy, feel good read.

Imagination is the ultimate weapon in battling boredom and adversity. The book is amazing and highly recommended.

I loved this story! It felt so genuine and the art really made it special. A story of friendship, finding yourself, first love, and dealing with all the complicated feelings of having your friend be in love and wanting them happy but wanting them to stay with you, wrapped up into a sweet graphic novel with expressive art, I highly recommend this title,

I am unable to get this review copy to work at all. There wasn't anything I could really do but this is a highly anticipated title.

This has a super cute illustration style, the colors popped off the page for me and I really love when a graphic novel is able to do that! Additionally, the two main characters were awesome! The story was great as well!

Charming. The imaginative improve gimmick gets a little old but it's really interesting as a mechanism to get to know these characters really well. The art is loose and stylish, there's depth to the world building, and much more than I expected there was much a sweet, caring plot about love and friendship and discovering who you really are and want to be. A lot of fun.

Early on in this book I asked myself if I was supposed to know these characters – they had an air of being ready-formed, and coming to this from somewhere else, some other franchise or entity. I guess that's a good thing, but also it's clearly not – yes, my comment can be taken as them being fully-realised characters, but also that they lacked something else, some prior connection and empathy with them. The point of the whole piece is that teenaged girls are supposed to know them, for they're supposed to BE them, or one of them at least – fan girls, comic nerds, wannabe scientists, dreamers, existentialist thinkers teenaged style… Yup. That probably explains my disconnect with it; that and the most unlovable artwork. And the unreadable cursive diary extracts. And the exposition-thru-listicle. Either way it seems built from web-comics that slowly, apologetically introduced some form of narrative when a lesbian crush appears, which was fine and dandy but still didn't spark much interest. This was not the niche I was looking for.

This was a fun collection of web comics with extra content, including diary entries and info pages. We follow best friends Marie and Nathalie as they play what if while navigating high school. I thought there was something really sweet about the relationship between these friends and the way they interacted felt authentic. I also thought that the comic dealt with the ups and downs of high school really well and I liked the art style a lot. I think some of the comedy didn't always hit the mark for me and was a bit juvenile at times, but overall I enjoyed this very much and will keep an eye out for the next collection.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review.

I received an ARC through NetGalley from IDW Publishing, Top Shelf Productions. This comic collection follows two 17 year old friends, Nathalie and Marie, as they play the game “What if we were.” They are constantly having fun and using their imaginations in empowering ways. While the drawings and characters were totally cute, I just found the flow of the comics, diary pages, and fun facts to be disjointed. I’d want to be friends with these characters and would recommend this to teen girls, but I feel like it needed a better balance between storyline and cuteness.

This is such a cute graphic novel! I love the friendship and their game of "what if". The characters were relatable for me and I just adore them.

The illustrations were great. I liked how they switched up are styles at certain points to go with the story. I also like that they showed the characters in different outfits. So fun!

Highly recommend! I hope they plan to do more in the future!


Thank you to Axelle Lenoir, IDW Publishing, and NetGalley for an eARC in exchange for an honest review!

Marie and Nathalie are in high school and are best friends and they have a made up game that they like to play called "what if". One of them comes up with an idea like "what if we were super heroines?" and the other answers and uses their imagination to flesh out the idea. Throughout the graphic novel Marie and Nathalie bounce back and forth with several games of "what if". The story is broken up with a few diary entries and questionnaire about them and a story line of Nathalie having a love interest that turns out to be a girl. The story was very basic and normal but relatable and fun. It reminded me of a webcomic because of those reasons. I think a lot of teens would have fun reading this title and identify with Marie and Nathalie's friendship.

As the blurb says, this is really a comic collection more than it is a graphic novel, though there are a few storylines (Nathalie's crush, changing friendships) that run through the chaos.

Nathalie and Marie play a game called "What If We Were..." where they imagine themselves in all kinds of magical and hysterical situations. While these random tangents don't make for much of a cohesive story, they do make for brilliant artwork--I particularly like when they play a "Quickfire" version of the game and we see them in new styles in nearly every frame.

There are introductions and journal entries and silly dialogues smattered throughout the comics, as well--and though I felt sometimes the author tried a little TOO hard to be funny, I did find myself laughing out loud fairly often.

This story seemed very basic. The episodes were super short and didn't feel like anything special. Although the characters were in their late teens, the way they acted made them feel more like they were preteens.

The illustrations were really fun, all the different scenarios were made interesting because of how they were drawn.