'Quarantine Comix' offers an insightful and relatable portrayal of life during lockdown, through poignant and humorous comic strips. Her raw depiction of everyday struggles during the pandemic resonates with readers.

I loved Quarantine Comix so much. Such a cool, interesting way of looking at the pandemic (which feels like a lifetime ago), that really helped me process everything and realise there’s a lot of things I never dealt with, either at the time or since. One I go back to time after time.

Quarantine Comi by Rachael Smith follows Rachael as she navigates anxiety, depression and sorrow during the earlier months of the covid-19 epidemic, stuck at home and limited to who she can see.

It's an interesting perspective, and Rachael presents charming vignettes, including a black dog and white dog, representing her hope and despair, that change size in each comic based on Rachael's mood. There are a small cast of characters - Rachael, her boyfriend, her best friend, and her housemate - but the characterisation for all of them is done well.

There isn't really a plot to this book - it is simply a collection of comic strips, going forwards chronologically - and ironically the issue with this is the same as Rachael's issue with the pandemic - everything starts to drag and feel a bit samey after a while. Whether this is deliberate or not is hard to tell.

Overall, this is an endearing bit of escapism with a heartwarming tone and a lot of positive ideas about connection and endurance.

Thanks to this book I now have a new Instagram account to follow. After the last year and half this book was so relatable to all the feelings and ups and downs felt during the pandemic, lockdowns, restrictions and the like. Rachael hits the nail on the head with snapshots of lockdown life, the struggles of a creative during this time and in general how anxiety/depression can take a hold of you.
This book was like a hug, an acknowledgement of not being alone with those feelings, but with moments of comedy thrown in. There truly were some laugh out loud moments (her cat is the most relatable depiction of owning a cat EVER!) that I can't wait to share with my friends.
The illustration style was cartoony and simple, in a very effective way of capturing and getting a scene across.

It's nice to know that quarantine was hard for all of us. As we were all isolated it was kind of hard to judge what other people were going through. Some were posting all sorts of glossy photos and seemed to be making the most of things, living their best 'lockdown life' - but we all know that photos lie.

Short, snappy and relatable panels really capture what went through a lot of peoples minds, from the heart achingly true to the incredibly dumb. I think the further we find ourselves from 2020, the more this collection will really hit home.

Quarantine Comix by Rachael Smith is a collection of short strips about the author's thoughts and experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THE BOOK
Quarantine Comix is relatable and will make you laugh. The stories may also, in some ways, also make the reader relieved about some of their own experiences during the lockdown. In documenting her thoughts and experiences during the pandemic, the author shares her humanity with us, making us feel empathy and laugh alongside her as we recognise ourselves in her stories.

WHO IS IT FOR
This is for all young adult and adult readers. Regardless of whether you like the gag-comic subgenre or not, I believe most people will enjoy these stories.

Many thanks to Icon Books for the review copy.

I really liked this book. It was a super quick, enjoyable read full of relatable moments.
Great humour mixed with sadder moments, that kept me reading.

I really enjoyed this book and it was one that I could find meaning with on loads of levels!

Lockdown and being in quarantine was certainly something I had not expected to be going through in 2020 and 2021 and if someone had said to me too that I would be going through all that with a three year old whilst working full time at home I would have laughed but having gone through it, it was a bit of a rollercoaster and this book covers quite a lot of the thought and feelings you go though.

A really different take on lockdown and a one that made me smile and giggle in places too - a unique and fun way at locking at what lockdown life is really like!

It is 5 stars for this one, a really good book - very highly recommended!

I am so addicted! I did not expect this book to be so funny, real and triggering at the same time! I started reading at midnight just to get a bit of relaxation in before bed…hours later and I’m still giggling to myself and also being slapped in the feelings over and over. It is so relatable. It seems like the whole world was in a similar situation.
My heart goes out to the author. I feel like if I met her, we would be good friends. So many of the things she writes about, I feel like she’s reading my mind!
I have a cat too and went through a crazy plant phase, those comics are absolutely hilarious! I also have so many moments where everything is fine, and then life just hits me and I can’t get out of bed. I feel like I am going to have to buy like 10 copies to give to my friends who I know will relate.
I honestly did not pick up this book expecting to be so emotionally connected to it by the end of it but I am!

This is my kind of comics !

I really enjoyed it ! It was so relatable, sometimes I felt like I was reading a comics about myself !

It made me smile, and also a little sad, and it mostly made me feel understood.

I just really really liked it !

A friend recommended I try this and I’m so pleased I did. Rachael Smith has created a truly beautiful record of her lockdown life which so many people will relate to it. Walking, first time gardening and avoiding people. I was also sneezed on by a horse so that image really made me laugh! Thank you!

A book that absolutely taps into how the pandemic and lockdown affected me. I've seen lots of things trying to sum up 2020 and this is the best.

DNF at 45%
I think #QuarantineComix will something a reader clicks with or not. For me I did not connect with this, despite the fact that many of the comic strips should be/ were relatable. I kept stopping and re-starting the book but in the end I just decided that this one wasn’t for me.

My usual graphic novel is non-fiction and tells a continuous story. I prefer that style. The strip-comic types I rarely finish as I don’t want to read them too quickly, which then turns into not reading them at all.
This was a great to dip in and out of between My Dark Vanessa (which was intense).
This book was fun and sad at times. I enjoyed the art style and the virbrant colour images. There were also some really beautiful moments and lessons in here.
I just don’t know where it goes? I just lived this, so for me reading it was a bit out of place. Not boring per se, as the author’s experience was different from mine which I did find interesting, but not what I would choose in retrospect. This pandemic is definitely something that new generations will learn about and read about, but this comic presumes too much knowledge about the decisions of the government over the past year to be informative. It’s like it’s written for me, now, and me now, would prefer to read anything but a memoir about what we are all going through at the moment.
But, then, as Heather said to Rachael, if it gets someone through this it’s worth it, and that someone could be you.

It’s hard reviewing a comic book like this. A weekly or daily feed of little vignettes of lockdown life regularly raises a chuckle. But it long-form, it doesn’t quite work. We already know how the story ends – after a year, you’re still in lockdown. You’ve grown around the belly, but have you grown as a person? No, probably not.

The sketches are cheerful, relatable, and a little heartbreaking in places. You’ll probably recognise your own behaviour in more than a couple. And, I guess that’s the value in art – holding a mirror up so that we may see ourselves better.

There are some beautiful gems within the book. Mostly drawn with a fairly minimalist aesthetic – which helps the few colour panels really pop.

Perhaps I don’t understand how to read a book like this. Taken all in one sitting I found it getting a little repetitive. For dipping in and out of, it’s great.

I think – like many works of art created during COVID – this will be of great interest to those looking back on our deeply weird lives.

Thanks to NetGalley for the preview copy. The book is released later this month.

This is funny illustrated depiction of what many of us have went through during the many lockdowns. It made laugh and also comforted me that what I had experienced wasn't just something I went through and was really beneficial. This would be a good gift for someone who has been left down by lockdown!

A brave and wonderfully funny anthology of strips that accurately capture what a weird and painful experience that lockdown was. There are guffaw producing gags about cats and hygiene as well as more melancholy pieces about missing loved ones and being unable to get out of bed.

Rachel's art is superb. It reminded me of Kate Beaton's work in the way she has mastered comedic timing and knowing when how to use facial expressions to make her emotional points pack the most punch.

Rachel isn't shy about sharing her mental health struggles which form a base for many of the comics. These struggles are used for both comedic and melancholic effect.

As a chronicle of Covid-19, this Quarantine Comix reveals much of what most of us were going through. How absurd and stressful the whole blasted thing was. Uplifting without being sugary sweet. Thank you.

Adorable comics depicting how I think most people felt over he past year. She comically shows the process her mind has gone through during the beginning of the lockdown including the depression we have all felt whilst being alone over this weird time.
And the characters are adorable!

I always find comics slightly harder to review than novels because there are just so many layers to them.

This collection sums up some realities for many people, especially those of us going through the pandemic with mental health issues.

A fairly quick read, but full of emotions.

Rachael Smith began documenting her quarantine experience shortly after the first lockdown began in the UK in 2020, and Quarantine Comix is the end result: a collection of one-page black and white diary strips with the occasional full colour splash page thrown in.

It was a pretty decent book that I’m sure many readers will relate to - I know I did. The strangeness of being locked down in your home, particularly that first time in March 2020, figuring out a new daily routine, trying not to let the news drive you crazy (but being unable to stop consuming it), adjusting to the new world order of webcam meetings/calls in lieu of then-ordinary face-to-face interaction - all of us experienced a version of this last year (and, of course, continuing into this year).

The quar affected people with mental health issues more than most and Smith is one of many who suffer from depression. A lot of the strips here deal with trying to maintain a healthy mindset, mostly through humour - she represents her depression as a black dog called Barky (the creature on the cover) and her optimism as a white dog called Friendly and has dialogues with both, which, while still serious, were amusing.

Some of the strips have fairly banal messaging - “Less thinking, more drinking” and “My body has gotten bigger during lockdown… but it’s ok… because I think my heart has gotten bigger too…” - and I’m so over cartoonists doing strips about their cats. We get it, cats are cute! And some of the material feels repetitive: trying to be productive but failing and being lazy, missing her beau Rob, etc. and mostly isn’t very funny.

But it’s an accurate snapshot of how the quar was for people. The bizarre run on toilet paper in the early days, the feeling of the days blurring together into one, of time passing both slow and fast, and the juxtaposition of being both neurotic about being close to people in public spaces while also experiencing the loneliness that comes from lack of physical contact with others. I also really liked the full colour splash pages - maybe they seemed more vivid following pages of black and white strips but they were gorgeously coloured.

The quality is a mixed bag but I found Rachael Smith’s Quarantine Comix more charming and enjoyable than not, even while the pandemic continues unabated (for now).