This is a lovely raw graphic novel about change and life. Nothing ever stays the same and having to try and figure out your life at 18 is intimidating. This book does a lovely job depicting a real year in the life of a freshman in college. All the ups and all the really big downs. Freshman year is really the first time in your life that you feel like you’re on your own and that you have to figure out life. What are you going to do with it, who is going to stay in your life or fall away. Everything is constantly changing but that first year of college can be a lot. Thank you to Sarah Mai for writing a realistic version of that first year. I hope that it helps others to see they aren’t alone, and that it doesn’t have to picture perfect.
Thank you to Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, Christy Ottaviano Books, and Netgalley for allowing me to read an advance copy of this book.

Freshman Year depicted all of the anxieties and struggles that come with going away to college. I really enjoyed this one!

This graphic novel told the story of a young girl’s freshman year at college. The pressures and worries felt really authentic.

Before I get into the bulk of my review, a quick thank you to both NetGalley and the publishers over at Christy Ottaviano Books, an imprint of Little Brown Books for Young Readers for allowing me access to this ARC in exchange for an honest review. In Freshman Year, we follow Sarah who just graduated high school and is enjoying her final summer at home before the start of college. But when she gets there she struggles to find a way to settle in and flourish. As the year goes on, we follow the highs and lows of her first year--meeting lots of friends along the way as Sarah tries to decide how to dress, how to eat, how to become her adult self. Freshman Year comes out on February 12th and is available for preorder now.

I want to start with the things that brought my rating down that aren't going to be impactful for most readers. What I need to remember with graphic novel ARCs is that the format doesn't always work. There were moments when the text on the page didn't line up with the speech bubbles or the images were muddied and hard to see. If you're reading a print copy, or even a completed eBook copy, this will not be a problem for you. I also struggled a bit with how emotionally charged this graphic novel is. I feel like I could really empathize with Sarah while reading because I also struggled in college to cope with all the changes happening around--and to--me. At first when starting college, again when coming home from college. It had me near tears a couple of times which I don't think was the actual intention. I think I just also had such a weird time my Freshman year of college. That also leans towards the positive side for me as well, I could truly relate to the main character and her friends. They all felt so real to me and that does say something about the writing. I think it was just a heavier graphic novel than I thought it would be. There are definitely some quirky moments to lift the story up a bit so it's not all emotional. I think my expectations were also just a little all over the place since I had read and loved Giant Days which was a comic series about a group of college friends in their first year and beyond.

But, overall, I think this was cute and sweet and emotional and funny all wrapped into one. It's not as quick of a read as I was anticipating but a couple of hours for a nearly 300 page graphic novel still isn't bad. Lots of fun and challenging moments to come with this one.

Sarah is about to leave Wisconsin for her freshman year of college in Minnesota. She’s ready for a fresh start and excited to see what the future holds: meeting new people, holding onto high school friendships, and starting long distance with her boyfriend. At the beginning of the school year, she is full of hope.

But as the year goes on, things start to unravel. Her relationship with her boyfriend ends, she’s constantly comparing herself to her high achieving roommate, and making friends is harder than she thought. Quickly overwhelmed by the freedom and the isolation, Sarah has to figure out how to make it on her own.

Thanks to NetGalley and Christy Ottaviano Books for an advanced copy of Freshman Year by Sarah Mai to review! Always love a graphic novel that will be relatable to teens, especially for that transitional time between high school and college. Mai hits on a lot of struggles teens face when they first move out on their own. The overall tone of the book works so well for that particular age group.

I enjoyed the art style, even if it wasn’t necessarily my favorite. Some panels throughout I think could have used more detail. But the characters throughout the story were well-developed, both Sarah’s original friend group and the new one she makes at college.

One of the best things I think Mai captured in this book is that feeling of isolation you can sometimes feel when you go to college. Yes, it’s fun and new and you’re meeting all these people, but you also feel nostalgic for all of the things that were familiar to you.

This will be great for those teens that liked reading things like Click by Kayla Miller or Guts by Raina Telgemeier. Also a great gift for those teens going off to college next fall!

Sarah is starting college and looking forward to becoming an adult. But freedom isn't all it's cracked up tp be. Sure, she has some new friends, but classes are hard, relationships are harder. The year in the life of a new college student, there is all the genuine hope, fear, sadness, and anxiety of growing up.

I love graphic novels as a way to tell stories. This felt like a memoir in picture form summarizing the freshman year experience. I struggled to read this as an ebook because the format made the pictures and form so hard to see and scroll through. But the story itself was nice and the graphics were well done. I had a hard time keeping some of the characters straight, several of them looked similar and it was hard to decipher who was who.

Thanks to NetGalley for providing me with a copy of the ebook to read and review.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for an advanced copy in exchange for my honest review!

3.5
Freshman Year is a very realistic dedication of someone's first year of college, to almost a painful degree. It includes all the good parts of starting college, but all the bad parts as well. I feel like this graphic novel would translate fairly well to a television show. But because it's so realistic, it became a bit boring at times. It's all very straightforward, and never really lingers on any subject or scene before immediately scooting off to the next thing. I'm very mixed on how I feel about the pacing of the story within this graphic novel. I did like the art. But, there was a detail that I noticed popping up almost constantly, to the point that I was noticing it all the time. Why are so many characters drawn with the "Face with Raised Eyebrow" emoji as their expression, with no reason? Like, there seemed to be a very limited set of facial expressions characters could have in any given scene. Again, others probably wouldn't care, but it stuck out like a sore thumb to me.

This was a cute story about the stressful and overwhelming transition from high school to college! While I think many readers could find this relatable, I felt like it was a little juvenile compared to the reality of the majority of college freshmen. The illustrations were bright and detailed, the characters well developed, and an overall quick enjoyable read. Thanks for the ARC!

This is a fun and poignant depiction of the transitional experience that is freshman year of college.

I really appreciated the focus here on low-stakes personal moments and the successful attempt to capture the “normal” college freshman experience rather than some great dramatic happening that doesn’t exist outside of a novel. Both have their place in fiction, but sometimes it’s just nice to read something that eschews great tragedy and drama for the basic but relatable experience of, y’know, eating cereal for dinner in the dining hall and having a minor meltdown over coursework.

This is definitely a very PG depiction of college freshmen. To that end, I’m not sure who the intended audience for this book is. Is it high school students? Unclear. This is an observation rather than a criticism.

I appreciated that the book didn’t lean too much into nerd gatekeeping (a common problem in books like this), and will thus be pretty relatable for most people, and particularly for the academic validation girlies like myself.

The art is fine. There’s nothing objectionable about it, though I would have liked to see more detail in setting and fewer panels dedicated to two characters in dialogue with little to no background detail.

Overall, definitely worth reading if you’re a college nostalgic millennial like me, and probably also worth a look if you’re in high school and looking for a story that is both informative and reassuring about what to expect when you arrive at college.

Freshman Year captured that nebulous year of transitioning from high school to college. You're suddenly hit with feeling like an adult but at the same time you're really not and it all moves so fast. The friends you had in high school aren't always the same ones you have in college and it gets harder to maintain friendships the same way you used to. The realest moment that stuck out to me is when Sarah is venting to Liz about feeling like a bad person and thinking she's so far behind her peers in class. That anxiety and insecurity Sarah feels is honest and something a lot of people (especially those just starting college) understand and have felt at some point. The ending was also cathartic for me because Sarah is now nineteen, "this is the last year [she's] a teen," she's not an adult yet, so she doesn't have to have everything figured out. She can just learn and try to enjoy college.

Thank you NetGalley for providing me an ARC copy of the book.
This is a coming of age graphic novel about going away to college freshman and finding your place. It definitely doesn't paint everything as sunshine and rainbows. It goes through the real struggle that so many people face.
The pacing of the graphic novel felt a little off. Scenes would cut and start with very little transition. It made me feel like I missed something every once in a while. It could have really benefitted from chapters.

Mai creates a wonderfully honest and true look at the sea change that is transitioning from the known of high school to the unknow of college. Will there be more? There should be more.