An interesting idea but somewhat lacking in focus. Tori's writing is a thruline but doesn't tie in directly. Most of the characters are underdeveloped.

I don't normally pick up graphic novels that tackle divorce, but this one did a good job at tackling both it and some other common issues that middle grade readers would experience. Tori did a great job conveying her experience during this time in her life. Even without ever experiencing divorce in my childhood, I was able to relate to Tori's experiences and made me have that connection with her and her family.

The artwork was fun and bubbly, just what I'm looking for in a middle grade graphic novel. I loved the colour pallette used--being neither too bright or diluted, sticking with pastel colours. In enjoyed the more simplistic panels and pages--I felt that gave the reader time to breathe and digest the story, bringing their own feelings and connections to the story.

Tori included, what I am assuming, is the story she made up as at that age. It seemed fun and inventive, what parts we get to see.

I highly recommend picking this one up if you enjoy want to get into memoirs and enjoy graphic novels (and vise versa).

Rating: 3.5/5 Fairy Stories

Format: I'd like to thank Tori Sharp and TBR & Beyond Tours for sending me an e-copy of this graphic novel in exchange for an honest review!

Review:
I really enjoyed this sweet and relatable graphic novel memoir! Tori is going through what many kids her age are, dealing with annoying siblings and separated parents. She spends more time in the car than she wants and her friends keep moving away or getting put in different classes. I loved how Tori continually tried to find ways to connect with her friends and worked through her issues with her friends and family members. I found her way of escaping into a fantasy world extremely relatable, as I'm sure many young readers would! Lastly, the art was super cute and colorful, it perfectly matches the youthful, fun, tone of the book.

The plot/story-telling is sort of subtle in this story, it's more about placing the reader in a time of Tori's life than working through some large conflict that gets resolved. I wanted a little more plot but overall enjoyed this story.

I would recommend this to young readers and to readers who also like to write and create their own worlds.

A big thank you to TBR Tours & Beyond for allowing me to review this very beautiful and moving Middle Grade Graphic Novel by Tori Sharp and published by Little Brown.
Tori chose to write and draw about her childhood and her friendship with Taylor which in some parts of the story might have been hard for Tori but it was a stunning debut and very honest and for me some parts I found heartbreaking and I really felt for the characters. I'm not going into much detail as I believe each person who reads it will get some kind of message or messages out of it no matter how old they are. At 50 years of age I got a lot out of it and in parts it actually made me shed tears. I also loved the fantasy story within the book and hope that Tori will make that into a full graphic novel too as it was amazing and it was very clever to use that. I have not seen that in a graphic novel before.

I loved how Tori showed her readers how she came about using that kind of art style which was stunning and well suited to the book. I had no idea how long it took and how hard it was to get the ideas onto paper and into print and I found this totally fascinating. I can't wait to see what Tori comes out with next and I shall be keep a lookout. For all these reasons I just had to give it 4 big fat stars.

Reading someone's memoir makes it hard to rate, because how can you rate someone else's experiences? I will rate how I enjoyed the book and the reading experience. I have to start off by saying that I love the illustrations. Everything is colorful and really stands out. I really enjoyed the art used in Just Pretend.


Tori is 12 years old and dealing with a lot children this age will understand: middle school, friendships growing and changing, siblings and in Tori's case her parents getting divorced. I have to say I really felt the emotions jump off the pages and have to say it did feel realistic. My only "issue" with this one were the time jumps. It happened a couple of times and sometimes it took a little bit before I could place where we were in the story.


Besides Tori's experiences we also get to see her love for creating stories. I loved the enthusiasm and that the author mixed some of this fantasy story through the memoir side of this story. It fit together well and it was fun to see how passionate she was even at a younger age. I feel it also showed us that this was her outlet to deal with everything else going on in her life.


There was also a nice finishing touch at the end where Tori talks about how the story came to be and is based on her life at that age. I also thought it was nice how she showed everyone how drawings came to be and how she put everything together. All in all a very interesting story.

This graphic novel was a lot of fun to read. There were so many good things about it like the complex friendships Tori has, the fact that this gn is basically two stories in one and the fun references to things 90s kids like me grew up with. I could relate to many things Tori was going through. It was definitely an enjoyable read.
However, some of the issues felt unresolved and many things were left open which gave me a more dissatisfied feeling in the end.
Only on the last pages I learned that this book is actually a memoire. I think it would have been better to know that beforehand because it would have given a totally different reading experience. Of course there is not always a solution or a resolve to problems in real life. Knowing that, "Just pretend" makes a lot more sense and is funnier in my opinion.

I was really enamored with this graphic memoir from the start because I was able to identify with the way Tori coped with what was happening in her life. While I didn't have the same experiences as her when I was her age, writing and reading were my escapes when I dealt with my own issues, so it was something that really resonated with me. That 7-9th grade range is a difficult time for many kids, especially when you have so many different issues going on. I really enjoyed the mix of seeing Tori's life and day to day mixed with her stories when she escaped into them. The story lines in some ways had parallels as Tori navigated her real life and attempted to survive and juggle everything going on. The art style was bright and vivid and perfectly suited both the real life and the fantasy.

I was really unimpressed with this title. The illustration is EXACTLY what I love in a graphic novel, but it was SO hard to follow. WAY too much going on, the pacing was bad, I felt like I needed to be reading two prequels to keep up, and whle I like the idea of the book-within-a-book, I didn't think it worked well here. It just made thing more confusing. Great art, less than stellar plot/storytelling.

Not really my jam. I’m not sure the intended audience will connect to it as much, it’s quite wordy. That being said I agree with the comp titles and hopefully young fans of those will enjoy this

Just Pretend is a beautiful and relatable graphic novel for anyone who is a creative or an introvert, perfect for fans of Eliza and Her Monsters and Fangirl.

It is pretty much a middle grade book but I still feel that a lot of YA readers will enjoy this.

It discusses everything from social anxiety and social awkwardness to introversion, dealing with parental conflict, love of books and writing.

The most spectacular thing about this was how closely I, personally was able to relate with and recognise so many of the things the protagonist (or, in this case, as this is a memoir, the author) goes through.
I had such fun reading this! Writing, and expressing myself through word, especially when I pick up a book, has always been the relief that I look to whenever I get overwhelmed. And just seeing that something like that in a story, it's awesome!

The artworks and the graphics were no less amazing. I haven't read a lot of graphic novels or comics before this, so I can't really critique anything about the drawings, but still to me they were incredible and a visual treat.

Surprisingly, for a character driven story, it is very fast moving and engaging with very flip of the page. I always wanted to keep going. The plot was very contained and yet evoked so many emotions. I felt like annotating every other page

When I pick up graphic novels I have realized that I tend to pick up middle grade ones as the art style is cute and colorful. This one is great for younger readers who are in grades 5-8, and I think its a good one for adults to read as well. My review for this one will look a bit different since it is a graphic novel so there is different things to talk about.

There were so many things in the book that reminded me of being that age and just kind of dealing with the many adjustments that were happening. I like that the story wasn’t really linear and it was all over the place because it was very much like a 12 year old’s mind. I think that the characters were quite realistic, and the way the siblings acted with each other was fun to read. I liked how the siblings didn’t really get along but then there were also moments in which the sister was supporting Tori.

Something else that I really enjoyed about this book was the ending when the author shared some pieces about herself with us. I liked that we got to learn about the process in writing this story and also how the book is a lot of the memories that she has.

In this book there are several characters that are introduced to you as Tori interacts with them. You really get to know Tori’s family and her best friend through this book which was something that I enjoyed. I liked how real her parents were and how we got to see how their separation affected each of the children.

I really liked the art style of this story and liked the drastic change in reading the book and then going to the story that Tori was writing through this time. I really liked how this book uses writing as an escape from reality. I thought that was very real for a lot of people but especially for that age range. It reminded me of how much I used to write in middle school and early high school just to escape what was currently happening.

This was a lot of fun! I love graphic memoirs in the sense that we often get to learn about the writing process and what made an author want to write in the first place. I appreciated the complicated family relationships and well as how fragile friendships can feel in middle school. I really enjoyed this one!

Good graphic novel for late elementary to middle school kids. Pacing felt slow. The story seemed to jump around quite a bit. Maybe it was just the digital copy I was reading, but it was really hard to tell how quickly time was passing?

This was a sweet, relatable middle grade graphic novel, perfect for fans of Raina Telgemeier, Lucy Knisley, Svetlana Chmakova, and Shannon Hale’s Real Friends.

This wasn’t my favorite middle grade graphic novel ever - I thought there were some continuity problems - but I think kids are going to love it anyway - recommended for 3rd grade and up!

This graphic memoir addresses issues that may interest kids in grades 3-5 such as parental divorce, sibiling rivalry, and living in 2 households. Tori uses her creative writing to escape her everyday issues and this memoir certainly shows how she began to develop as a writer. While there is a nice representation of the role step parents can play in a child's life (not always the villain!) other problems (mom's s financial worries, dad being out of contact) could have been more fleshed out and may leave some readers unsatisfied. Finally, the flow of the story seemed choppy at times, it may benefit from chapter breaks to denote passage of time, etc.

Thank you to NetGalley and Little, Brown Books for the review copy of this book. Tori's parents have recently divorced and she is navigating living in two households, her parents trying to co-parent, her siblings who take out their negative feelings on her, and middle school. The make-believe world Tori has created in the graphic novel she is working on helps her work through her feeling and the changes currently happening in her life.

The storyline felt disjointed and it was hard to gauge how much time had passed. While I enjoyed the storyline, the story jumped around in time span which I found a bit confusing to follow, and I was left unsatisfied with a somewhat unresolved and abrupt ending, Additionally, I was hoping for some resolution with the siblings, but perhaps we'll see that if there are more books to come.

Thank you to NetGalley and Little, Brown Books for the review copy of this book. Just Pretend by Tori Sharp was intriguing to me as a graphic memoir. My students love reading graphic novels, and graphic novels often give them a chance to step inside a real story and discover empathy for people who are sometimes different than them.

I am excited to put this into my students’ hands (once the paper copy I ordered comes)! Tori Sharp chronicles how she coped with fall-back from her parents divorce and the trials of middle school by using creativity and imagination. I really enjoyed the story. I found it jumped a couple times, but it came together really well and had a satisfying ending. I discussed it with my students, and went to order a copy for my classroom shortly after. They will love it!

Tori's parents have recently divorced and she is navigating living in two households, her parents trying to co-parent, her siblings who take out their negative feelings on her, and middle school. The make-believe world Tori has created in the graphic novel she is working on helps her work through her feeling and the changes currently happening in her life.

Realistic fiction graphic novels are in high demand in my elementary library, so I had high hopes that I could add this title our collection. For me, this storyline jumped around too much. The segues from the real world to Tori's graphic novel excerpts were abrupt and I found myself having to re-read several times to focus on how events in the real world and make-believe world were connected. There was also a lot packed into this one book: the divorce and her parents living in two separate places, dad's new girlfriend, sibling issues, and friendship issues, and moving to a new community and preparing to attend a new school without friends. All these events, in my opinion, had opportunities to be the focus of separate stories in a series instead of all together in one book. There was simply too much going on and it was at times, confusing. Instead of writing broader, I would have liked to have seen the events written deeper....if that makes sense.

Summary: Middle schooler Tori is dealing with her changing life; her parents are divorced, she doesn’t get along with her siblings, and her relationship with her friends is changing. Tori finds her escape in writing, where she creates new worlds. Can Tori find happiness in the real world?

Review: When I started reading this book, I was hoping for a book to recommend to the dozens of tweens who come into the library looking for something to read after they devoured Smile, Sisters, and everything else Raina Telgemeier has written. Just Pretend fits well into the world of tween graphic novels, but it doesn’t quite live up to the expectations of young readers. Tori’s story is relatable as she navigates a changing family and the evolution of her friendships. I did not, however, find Tori relatable. Tori is all emotions and reactions, and I never really connected with her. Also, I was disappointed with the portrayal of Tori’s parents, her mother only nagged her, and her father ignored her. I understand Tori’s story is real and many readers have experienced the things she is going through, but I don’t see them finding this book. Plus, I had a hard time with the illustrations. The art was fine, but I had difficulty distinguishing between the tweens, teens, and adults. Don’t get me wrong, Just Pretend was a perfectly fine book, but the middle school graphic novel readers at my library are going to be disappointed by this one.

The underlying story being told was interesting, but the overall arch didn't add up. The storyline felt disjointed and it was hard to gauge how much time had passed. There were also major issues that were never addressed or glossed over, like why does Tori wake up and not recognize where she is (or when she didn't recognize her pants), her brother's severe anger issues, or her father not speaking to her for months. I also found issue with the fact that they artwork depicted the only Asian person in the story as having yellow skin.