Though this graphic novel is beautiful and I love the messages, it is not for me. I was not rooting for the characters and at times, confused on the characters motives. I believe this stems from not being the target demographic and the timeline jumping around.

Personal rating:
2.75🌟, rounded up to 3🌟

The constant time-jump is hella confusing. Let's start with that lol. At times I felt like this graphic novel is sorta a fever dream of some sort, thanks to the very frequent time-jumps. Only nearing the end do we finally get clarification and the storyline started to make more sense but you know what they say: too little too late ¯\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

The graphic is really nice, though. Love the colour palette, the drawing style. Definitely made the reading process of this novel less painful.


Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with a free digital copy of this in exchange for an honest review.

This graphic novel feels fresh and inviting. We are told the plot through flashbacks of Leighton and Dylan's friendship and how they ended up at a summer camp together. The art style is beautiful. I really appreciate the casual inclusion of an asexual character and a nonbinary character.

This was cute and it was a fast read, but I just needed a little something more. I think the color scheme made it easy to tell what was a memory and what was present day, but I felt the story telling itself was a little choppy. I also needed a bit more to that conclusion (or lack thereof). To my knowledge, this isn't a series with future installments so it just kind of leaves off in an unresolved place. (But maybe I'm wrong and there will be more to come? I don't know.)

Thank you to Mad Cave Studios and NetGalley for providing an advanced copy of this title in exchange for an honest review.

Paper Planes is a beautifully crafted graphic novel about the challenges of friendship and young love. The main story takes place at a summer camp for "troubled teens" with flashbacks to how the main characters ended up there.

I love how the two storylines slowly revealed more about the relationship between Dylan and Leighton and how it all came together at the end. The art was beautiful and the story had me invested from the start.

I also loved the representation, with Dylan being non-binary and Leighton being ace. The handling of their identities was very well-done.

I definitely recommend this graphic novel for a heartfelt YA story with queer rep. 4.5 stars, but I rounded to 5.

Paper Planes is a wonderful graphic novel with fun illustrations to accompany the story. I really liked how it was told in both the past and present and we were able to see the multi dimensional characters' backstories and learn more about how they ended up at a troubled teen camp. I think this is a quick read that should be on everyone's radar this summer.

I absolutely loved this book. It was filled with raw emotion and character growth that I loved. I enjoyed that the reasons behind being at the camp unfolded as the characters went through their own thoughts and u der standing of the situation. I liked that all of the characters came with their own set of flaws. It’s incredibly well written and beautifully illustrated. Would highly recommend this book!

In this graphic novel, we meet Dylan and Leighton, two teens who have been sent to a 'summer camp for troubled youth'. Throughout the story, we see them at the camp but also get flashbacks to their time at school together, their friendship, and the events that eventually led to them being sent to the camp.
I especially liked the structure, switching between the present - their summer camp - and the past. This created some sort of suspense, I wanted to keep reading in order to discover what happened, how they had ended up at the camp, no longer being best friends. In the graphic novel, a lot of time is spent on Dylan and Leighton's friendship and how it develops over time, with ups and downs. This gave the characters depth and made them more realistic. You could see that they really cared for each other, but that things were a lot more complicated than that. During their summer camp, they also built up some new connections and it was nice seeing these develop into friendships.
I quite liked the drawing style, as well as the use of colours indicating past versus present. It had an unpredictable and pretty open ending which left me thinking about it for a while after I'd finished. Finally, there is a good representation of various LGBTQIA+ characters. I've realized that I like reading graphic novels in the genre of young adult, coming-of-age, coming-out, and just teens forming their own identities. So this was a great read, I enjoyed it very much.

It is a graphic novel. It tells a deep story of feelings and expectations. Of hopes for the future that don't belong to us. What it means to be pressured into taking shapes that don't fit us. What it means to bottle up those feelings for such a long time that they begin to hurt and ruin and destroy you inside... This book deals with these topics and not only, and at the same time keeps them on the surface, without diving into them completely. I wish they were dealt with in a deeper way. I also wish there were a sequel! Thank you very much to the author, illustrator, publisher and NetGalley for this opportunity. I loved it 💖

I didn't expect to like this book as much as I did, but I managed to finish it in an afternoon. I loved both Dylan and Leighton, faults and everything. The artwork was absolutely beautiful and the emotions jumped off the pages. I felt the flashbacks correlated nicely with what was going on in the present day camp and equally added to the readers knowledge on Dylan and Leighton's relationship.

I also loved the representation throughout the book and how it accurately captured the fear of happily being yourself when your not able to.

While I did think the ending was good and beautiful, I was quite upset with it. The whole time I had been hoping for it go in a different direction and while I still think the direction it wound up in was nice for the book, I still wish it had ended differently.

I really enjoyed this book. I got attached to the characters and really appreciated seeing quite complex teen friendship dynamics. I loved the non binary and aro ace rep too!
On a slightly more subjectively disappointing note, I didn't like the ending.
Bittersweet endings can be really good, but with this one, to me, it felt more sad and uncomfortable than anything else.

This was really a really good, bittersweet story about friendship, mistakes, family expectations and pressures, gender questioning, addiction, class differences, jealousy, bullying, growing together and apart. Realistic, well rounded and flawed characters and friendships combined with a really lovely art style made this a touching and enjoyable read.

I was drawn from the very beginning by the drawings, and then I was captured by the story. The concept of drifting away from people that were really important to you hit very close to home and I think it was very well represented in here.
There are a lot of strong feelings and emotion, but the entire story is infuse of a sense of hope that healed something in me, even when the plot became a little hard to follow because of the switching between past and present.

In general, it was a great reading and I reccomend it!

What a cool premise for a graphic novel!
This is the story of two teens who meet at a camp for troubled youth after an "incident" and is then told with flashbacks from when they first became friends to what really happened that landed them at the camp.
I loved how the flashbacks were excuted in the story, they seamlessly happened and added to the story instead of causing one to lose the sense of the narrative.
Both characters were really authentic, falwed and fleshed out and queer and I loved following them.

While I did enjoy Paper Planes, I guess I was waiting (and hoping) for a bit more of a resolution toward the end of the story.
Other than that, it was a really lovely read.

Former best friends Dylan and Leighton are stuck in summer camp for troubled youth after a life altering incident happened. If they don’t get a good evaluation at camp, they’ll get sent away to an alternative high school. While participating in activities and chores at camp, both teens reexamine what led them to their current situation.

This was a good read and a good story, but the storytelling was a little difficult to follow at times; it wasn’t always told there was a time jump and you had to distinguish between the color scheme of the pages.

I wasn’t ever the biggest fan of Leighton to be honest. I know she was going through stuff and that she was hiding things from Dylan (they both were hiding things from each other), but I don’t know - I never felt like they were the best of friends like they were supposed to have been. I was also disappointed in the ending of it as I didn’t feel like there were conclusions to parts of the storyline.

I was still a fan of the graphic novel though and will for sure be recommending it to others. I really enjoyed the art and will be suggesting it to some for that reason. The representation and the storyline that some of the characters went through are important to share and I can see others enjoying it.

*Thank you Maverick and NetGalley for a digital advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review

Rating 3.75/5 stars
My Review: Although I think the non-binary and asexual representation in the book through Leighton and Dylan, I found the overall storyline not super compelling until the very end of the book when the reader finally discovers why they are at the camp for troubled teens and that Dylan ends up covering for Leighton so that she can get to tennis camp for the rest of the summer like she does every year. I also liked how the camp counsellor gave Dylan a non-binary flag friendship bracelet. I thought that gesture was a really sweet way for her to acknowledge Dylan's gender identity. I didn't like how Dylan was whiny about the fact that Leighton doesn't like him back and didn't really accept the fact that she identifies as asexual, but I mean, they are like 13 years old, so being whiny about your crush is not liking you back is kind of a given. Overall I found the book enjoyable as the reader, but I wouldn't personally go out of my way to reread this book in the future. but I also think that the representation of queerplatonic friendships and both the asexual and non-binary characters would be enough for me to recommend this book to the right reader.

This was a very good graphic novel. I especially liked the ace and non-binary rep. The drawings were beautiful and I liked how the colours changed when there were flashbacks.
I found this to be a really good storyline as well.

Thank you for allowing me to review this book. I am always a fan of LGBTQ books and graphic novels and this was no exception. The characters friendships are so realistic and heart wrenching. The characters were delightfully flawed in the perfect amounts. I look forward to buying this for my school library!

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an earc in exchange for an honest review.
Graphic novels are new to me, so I was quite surprised when I became invested in these characters .The plot was good, a great representation of being young and queer! My main problem with this story was the confusion with the characters ages, I’m still not sure how old these kids were. Some topics seemed high school age, while the characters often seemed written as more middle school in my opinion.

I would like to thank Mad Cave Studios and NetGalley for granting me this ARC in exchange for writing an honest review!

Unfortunately, I have DNF this comic book @54%

I tried to enjoy this book thoroughly but the storyline felt all over the place. I was so confused in some parts that I decided to DNF it. This can be enjoyed by someone else so you could give it a try.