A wonderful ode to being young. Jillian and Mariko Tamaki 's work always seem to be pitch perfect when it comes to understanding and celebrating what it means to be a young adult, even when in darker tales. I loved the palette which gives the lovely retro feel that mirrors the era the story it takes place in, and there is such energy bursting out of the pages thanks to the panel combinations. It's very different from their other collaborations, but good different!

thank you so much to the publisher and netgalley for letting me read an arc of this graphic novel! i really enjoyed it, especially having just been in new york, so i could recognize where the characters were and things like that which made everything more relatable to me. i thought all of the characters were very complex and a lot actually happened despite it being such a quick read and i really liked that there was some queerness sprinkled in too! the art was absolutely beautiful, i really loved it and i thought it added a whole new dimension to the story. the dialogue also seemed very natural, the story itself was entertaining and gripping, i could really feel myself feeling annoyed or stressed or sad when the characters were (and the whole novel probably took me only an hour or so to read!) overall i really liked it and would definitely read more from these authors in the future!

I will read anything that is put out by the Tamaki's. It could be their grocery list and I would still read it. This was a fantastic book; a love letter to being young and wild in a new city. Two long time friends that haven't seen each other in awhile, Dani and Zoe, meet up in NYC for spring break. But Dani brings a classmate with her, Fiona. Fiona brings a weird dynamic to the group, throwing off everyone's plans and interjecting with her opinion about everything. Wil the girls be able to get along? Or will their spring break be ruined?

Roaming is a queer graphic novel about a trip of three college students going to New York and the adventures and misadventures that they get up to along the way.

I loved the queer representation in this novel but the real standout to me was the incredible use of the illustrations to portray the inner world of the characters as well as the plot.

Two of the friends on the trip have known each other since high school and one invited a third friend, Fiona, from college. Fiona was the big reason I didn't love this book. She wasn't written as being completely unsympathetic, yet I didn't like her in the slightest and found her quite irritating.

The stunning illustrations of well known and lesser known parts of New York culture kept me going with the book which I may not have otherwise due to my frustration with the plot.

However, this is a portrayal of college students, and college is a time for making mistakes, so I think where I was irritated, others may not be.

While I don't know if Roaming quite hit the same heights as This One Summer and Skim, I thoroughly enjoyed my time with it. Jillian's art is the real stand out here, with truly breathtaking spreads throughout. The story didn't quite hit for me, but that can be chalked up to being a little outside it's target audience. For someone who is, say, 19 0r 20 finding that their relationships with childhood friends are changing in ways that they don't quite understand, it would hit a bit harder.

Unfortunately this was not for me as I didn’t find the plot or characters engaging enough, and the characters weren’t all that likeable. However, the artwork is pretty and I’ve yet to come across any graphic novels with that style and colour palette.

Thank you to NetGalley for the opportunity to read this.

Unfortunately this one was not for me.
The art style and colours used were absolutely stunning but the story is something i couldnt get into

An interesting commentary on friendship and development. I love the Tamaki twins, especially when they work together, and so this was a treat. The art was beautiful, and the story developed really nicely; I felt that it was perhaps a bit too long for my liking though, and that while it felt purposeful, could have been more. Thanks Drawn and Quarterly for the galley :)

A great graphic novel following Canadian school friends Dani and Zoe as they meet up in NYC for a city break to catch-up after heading to different unis. Dani brings new uni friend Fiona along and the three explore the city and tourist spots. The atmosphere flips between fun and tense as the friend dynamic alters, and different expectations and experiences over the week shape their time together.

Told in shades of pastel, NYC is depicted perfectly, and the panels flow and combine according to the mood. Intermittent silent pages set the scenes for locations and emotions.

This is a super good new adult novel and I’ll absolutely be watching out for more from these talented authors.

Many thanks NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this really smart new graphic novel.

As someone several generations removed from the protagonists, I do not feel like the target demographic for this book. But I still found it emotionally resonant and evocative of that time of exhilarating and terrifying transition into early adulthood, including the challenges of determining and resetting established boundaries with one's BFF.

I think this book covers some interesting topics like young relationships, travelling with friends, and transitioning from highschool to university. But I think what let it down for me was that it covered too much for any of these to be in depth. Because of this, a lot was left unfinished and unexplained.

The artwork is really great though and I absolutely loved it! I especially love the way they captured movement.

It's definitely worth a read and I do think it captures what it's like to be a teenager left out of a friend group really well

It was lovely to be thrown into a Tamaki graphic novel again. Roaming's art style was stunning, and I enjoyed the diversity of the characters. The story was also intriguing, and although I would have loved to see what happened after their trip, I'm sure that was the intention all along. I can imagine how well this graphic novel do when it's released later this year.

I loved the blue-grey and beige color palette, and the art style in general was really nice too. The pacing was a bit slow, but I liked the atmosphere. I kind of hated all the main characters by the end, after all the drama, but I still liked the book more than I expected to.

Well! Consider the source, a 7o-year-old white guy (swipe! buh-bye, Dave!) who thinks that This One Summer (especially) but also Skim, their first two collaborations, are among the best YA graphic novels ever. Period. And I've read much of what they have dione and reviewed it (though it is hard to keep up with all the supe stuff Mariko is doing).

So! At page 100, at page 200, though, I am like: This is a 446 page graphic novel about a spring break with three girls in Manhattan in 2009 and almost nothing but sightseeing has happened yet??!! It's a travel book!?? But then a little buzz happens between two girls, at the expense of the other, there's tension, and this gets resolved, and that's it. It has the intensity of feeling in the images that happened in those first two books, thanks to Jullian's amazing artwork, but this one is lighter, less consequential than something that digs deep into what it means to be a girl and woman such as we find in This One Summer. So the story is.. . nice, but lets me down a bit.

The art is the real hero here from Jillian, who I find in the credits got help in selecting/developing images for her depiction of 2008 NYC from online followers, I think?. And then there are these sort of thrilling magical realist moments, swirling lovely colorful expressions of the emotional life of the trip. I dunno, I think any fans of this duo will buy anything they do, and this is going to be a hit, but honestly I would probably cut 1/3 of the story (ugh, but then you'd lose that artwork. . .) just get to the heart of it. But the girls become real, the two original friends right the ship, yay. This will be an event in comics in 2023, so y'all should read it.