This was a cute and emotional coming-of-age story. This is a graphic novel adaptation of the French novel My Friend in the Dark by Pascal Ruter. Victor is a boy who struggles with his academics, and he fails almost every class he's in. Enter Marie Jo, an intelligent girl who aces almost every class of hers. After an incident involving the two of them, Marie Jo suggested a plan: she will help Victor study. As they get closer, we find out Marie Jo's losing her vision, and that it was worsening everyday. To support her ambitions to get into music school, Victor helped Marie Jo with whatever he could — even if it might lead to rather drastic actions.

I have never read the original book, but I find that the graphic novel lacks a lot of nuance that the book must've had. The pacing is awfully fast, and the dialogue sometimes comes off as awkward. The paneling is also confusing, and I'm speaking as someone who enjoyed numerous graphic novels and mangas for years. This was a bit hard to navigate while reading.

I did enjoy the plot though, and the romance between Marie Jo and Victor was very sweet. It was a bit too dramatic at the end, but honestly all coming-of-age stories are like that. Marie Jo's determination to commit to her passion of playing the cello and getting into music school despite losing her vision is very touching to read about, and Victor's struggle with his own self-esteem and academics was angsty yet relatable. The art is gorgeous, and I love the coloring done in the book. It's a very visually pleasing experience to read this book.

All in all, I give this 3 ⭐️. I'm intrigued to read the original novel because I think there is much more nuance hidden from this graphic novel that it is unable to capture successfully.

Many thanks to Netgalley and Europe Comics for the ARC ✨

Such a sad but sweet story. I really liked the art style, it was so cozy. I loved the characters, how they pushed each other to their best selves. It has a strong point of never giving up on your dreams and on people that are there for you no matter what.

I loved this. I'm blown away by how loving this was.

It's story was so sweet and the illustrations made it beautiful.
The characters are wonderful with their lively personalities that make you smile, but with dilemmas that reach your heart.
The relationship of the main characters grew slowly and it was all so pure and innocent, with an enormous vivacity of adolescence.
The main character's friends and father added a lot to the story, the love is felt and the support and trust between them is shown, through their conversations and how they deal with each other.
And the story is accompanied by superb illustrations. Just look at the cover! They are so beautiful and expressive that they easily make the reader feel. I was dazzled by the images that illustrate the words, which through smooth colors and lines tell us such a loving story.
It all connected so well. The words and images became one. I just loved it.

And I need a continuation! I read the book in one sitting, and I wanted more. A lot more. I didn't want the magic, from when I opened the book, to disappear after turning the last page.

This book is not at all what I was expecting since I picked it up due to the title and didn't bother reading the description but overall it was such a cute quick story. Marie and Victor were able to help and understand one another in a way probably a lot of people didn't before. I'd love to be able to read about what the future has in store for Marie and Victor because Marie helped change Victor into the person he wanted to be. I truly recommend this book, it's short but it has a good message to it.

My Heart in Braille is a short graphic novel about a young boy named Victor, and Marie-Jo, a girl he meets in class. While navigating complicated high-school experiences, they grow close to one another and add value to each others’ lives.

This was a short and sweet story and I really enjoyed reading it! It felt like watching a heartwarming short film. I love that we can watch the development of the main characters and the growing relationship between them, demonstrated by their dialogue and the problems they overcome.

I do think some of the translations were a bit off, which at times left me feeling like I missed something, but it didn’t affect my overall enjoyment of the book. I did love the references to classic French literature and artwork.

Artwork in a graphic novel is obviously very important, and the illustrations here were lovely. The character design was adorable and I was very impressed by the background details in many of the panels.

what??? this is literally one of the sweetest, most wholesome graphic novels I've ever read! it reminds me of that one welcoming, green & gold, from the style/story a little bit. I do not normally read romance, but I enjoyed this one and the message. also the art is so gorgeous?? the coloring is the literal definition of eye candy. I love this story a lot. I wish it were a bit longer :"(

What a beautiful story! It is a quick and enjoyable read. And Victor makes for an endearing and lovable main character.

It is always refreshing to see disabilities represented in books where the disability doesn’t define the character, it is just one part of who they are. I think this graphic novel accomplished this in a beautiful way.

The art is also beautiful and I loved the colors that were used.

The text has a few typos but not so many that I felt it was really distracting.

I would absolutely recommend this book!

Opposites attract: Marie is a would-be professional musician, bent on succeeding well enough at both school and cello that she's selected for a prestigious music academy. Victor has his garage band and an inch-thick file at the principal's office. But when chance pushes them together, they find that working together can keep them both on the right track.

Art can make or break a graphic novel, and it's working well here—clean illustrations, with some lovely moments when they break out of the panel-after-panel format to fill the page with wordless color and movement. (In particular, and I know this is oddly specific, I love Marie's hair.)

At under 80 pages, though, this is a slim volume, and I found myself wishing the story could slow down in places: more about Marie's parents, more about Victor's mother, more about what keeps Victor and Marie together when they're not helping each other towards their goals and Victor isn't pretending to be someone he's not. More about the twins, more about Hussein, more time to explore why Victor struggles in school. (Marie's parents in particular: they, and she, seem to treat the possibility of Marie going to a disability-specific school as something of a punishment, but I have to think that it's much more complex than that—such a school, assuming it's a good one, could give her strategies and solidarity that she might not get elsewhere, and there's no guarantee that the music school would be at all understanding. I'd have loved to see that explored more.) It's well-told overall, but I'd have been happy to see this same story told with twice the page count.

Readers might also consider, on first read, skipping the first page and coming back to it at the end, to have a bit more suspense in the story.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.

My Heart In Braille is a short graphic novel that captures one girl's love of music and coping with her worsening loss of vision. Victor a young boy who struggles with school, but has a big heart, helps Marie-Jo hide her worsening eyesight from everyone so she can audition for music school, before her parents force her to go to a school for the blind.
This is a heart warming story of friendship, overcoming adversity and learning to manage the world around you. I loved the two main characters, and wished we could have spent more time in this universe. The amount of heart that is shown is this short graphic novel is incredible. I loved the graphics, and thought they really helped to pull the story together and helped in come to life. This book did jump around a little, and could have used some more length to really fill the story in completely.
Overall this was a wonderful, quick read that anyone could enjoy.
I rated this 4/5 stars.
Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC.

This story was really cute! I just wish there was more to it. The romance was very insta-love and the plot was pushed along really fast. I wanted to get to know the characters a lot more!

I really liked the story and the art was really pretty. I was really interested in this BD and its characters.

A beautiful story that is so much more than boy meets girl. Marie Jo is losing her sight, Vic is losing his sense of purpose. After a tough year after his mum walked out on their family, Vic has been in trouble more times than not at school. This changes when he meets Marie-Jo who tutors him and helps him find himself again. Vic & Marie-Jo's first love lends for a beautiful story but I felt there could have been more fleshed out plot and more interactions with the other side characters. A quick cute read but it didn't leave a lasting impression for me.

My Heart in Braille is a very sweet story about 2 high school kids who both have their own struggles, but learn to push forward with the help of each other. Victor is a 9th grader who has a hard time with his classwork and cannot seem to stay out of trouble. Marie, a girl from his classes, is suddenly going blind and is trying to hide how bad it is from her parents so she can audition for music school. Marie agrees to help Victor study so he can pass his classes, and along the way Victor realizes Marie might need some help too.

I liked the illustrators art style in this novel. The characters were well drawn and the style was similar manga but the character dimensions and facial expressions were a bit closer to reality.

What really bugged me about this graphic novel is that there were certain parts where characters were introduced only to be malicious, and then we never see them again. There was an entire section of the book where Victor goes to a party and the outcome is less than desirable that could have completely been cut. It did not add to the story. I also don't understand why Marie was auditioning for music school in 9th grade, and why she would need a page turner. As a musician myself, if you are auditioning, your music is memorized anyway. She wouldn't have been allowed to use her music. The thing that was most unrealistic was that somehow Marie's parents didn't know how bad her eyesight was. If you are a parent with a kid with a degenerative disease, how would the kid have the information but you not? I would assume they would have to take her to the appointments and that the information would have to be shared with them because they are her guardians. So unfortunately, despite how sweet this story was supposed to be, I will have to give it a 3/5 star rating. It's a story thats supposed to be based in reality and I just found to many aspects unrealistic. I still think a lot of people will enjoy this though!

Thank you to netgalley for providing a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

The artwork was nice and the story was interesting. I wasn’t really invested too much in the teen characters because they were both kind of immature to the point of being annoying.