Seoul Before Sunrise is the English translation of Samir Dahmani's french graphic novel and it was published last Tuesday in U.S.

It’s part of an anthology entitled Korean Nights, centered on the theme of young women's transitions to adult life in a big city.

Two Korean friends Seong-ji and Ji-won, who have known each other for a long time, have just finished high school and have to move to Seoul to attend the University. Seoul with its "big city life" separates them and imposes on them the ways and rhythms of life that are very different from those they were used to in their small town by the sea.

Seong-ji greatly somatizes this separation, finds herself living in solitude, wishes to see her friend again, she is counting days that pass without Ji-won.

The cartoonist highlights the difference between day and night during the narration: the day in the big city represents routine, work, the competitive relationship; while Seoul at night opens the curtain on a fantastic, unreal world made of creativity and freedom. In this surreal atmosphere Seong-ji meets a young woman, nicknamed 'ghost', who enters uninhabited houses before sunrise to see how the owners live and starts drawing and painting. Thanks to the ghost with the green notebook, Seong-ji. will no longer feel alone, she will appreciate her company and she will learn to know herself and not to hide her feelings.
At last, she decides to meet her old friend Ji-won again: her coming out is a very painful moment when her friend rejects it and with her the entire Korean society.

Seoul Before Sunrise is a moving, poetic graphic novel: a story of friendships, a story of not reciprocal love between women, but also a message of hope for future love.

The color palette used by the cartoonist plays with warm, cold, neutral tones and chiaroscuro to portray the neighborhoods of Seoul and the protagonists. Even the weather is important to reveal the feelings and moods of the protagonists. The drawings are made with the tablet and then traced in pencil and painted with watercolor to highlight the color contrasts. However, I've noticed that the protagonists have Western not Eastern facial features, the drawings are reminiscent of Japanese manga.

In my opinion everything is balanced and coherent!!

I'll wait for the second volume!

Everyone should read it!


Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with a free copy in exchange for an honest review!

This was a bit confusing to read and get through. I at times felt like I was missing something, or I just wasn’t understanding the story. The main character did/said a lot of things that just didn’t really make sense and I felt like the whole ‘queer self discovery at the expense of another queer person’ was a little annoying.
The art was really interesting and beautiful, but the story was a jumble of emotions, weird actions/words, and just felt really peculiar.

The art style was really beautiful but I don't get it. It feels so vague like I'm supposed to understand something but I didn't. I didn't understand what the story was getting at, I didn't feel anything for the characters and the older woman only felt creepy to me. The two stars are solely for the illustrations.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for the chance to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

The illustrations in “Seoul before sunrise” are gorgeous and super atmospheric.
I liked the story but I felt like the ending was a bit abrupt. I would have liked it to go on for a few pages more!
2,5*

Thanks to NetGalley and publishers for letting me read this book in exchange for an honest review!

2.0/5.0 for content + 1.0 extra for better illustrations.

It is a story of two longtime friends Seong-ji and Ji-won. Both were very close but then part their ways for their respective careers. Ji-won became detached as she was more practical but Seong-ji was emotional and stayed in thought of being with her friend again.

Latter due to lack of finances studied in day time and worked in night time in a grocery store to accommodate the expenses. She met a young women who was older than her while peeking in others' houses in night time to paint and photograph those places (it is illegal though, so other readers must not be influenced with this act). Author said it through her "you know, I do this at night because it’s the time when our eyes are freshest., during the day, everybody is so judgemental. we have to be blameless in the eyes of others.", but still this is wrong.

Both discussed things and their past lives but when Seong got inspired and asked Ji-won to meet her Ji-won was different in act. So different from what Seong knew about her from her earlier days. She than realized that her world fallen apart and she left the place.

This was more about lesbo-love than a fair friendship. But it was all one-sided, be it from Seong-ji for Ji-won or from that Mysterious women for Seong-ji, but it was mostly LGBTQ+ only, which was not mentioned in the genres listed. However, there were some life teaching she gave to Seong, like, “Silence can say a lot. In fact, it can be very talkative when you know how to listen.”

Honestly, I do not like this graphic book. Do not understand the concept of writing it when there is no proper start and end. And, even in mid-ways there is no proper content to fill it with gripping essence. If Author wanted to leave it with an open end then also there must be some proper route not just ambiguity on thoughts with no sense of any emotion. There should be more on how those two friends met and what was the reason on Ji-won's cold behavior or why suddenly some strange women took Seong-ji with her? There must be some yielding part play by that women.
It was very obvious and realistic that we loose many of our friends while switching from school to university and then for Job and that was the concept put forth but in a very lean dis-engaged manner. BLEAK.

Cover illustration was so appealing but content is exactly opposite though water color illustrations inside were also very nice.

My Goodreads review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6521954137

A sad story about growing up and apart. Seong-Ji and Ji-won have always been best friends, but when it’s time to start the university life, they go their different ways. There are promises of keeping in regular touch, but Seong-Ji soon realises they only meant something to her. As she tries to firgure out why she misses Ji-Won so much, she meets a strange woman who teaches her to see things from a new perspective.

This was a dreamlike story that mostly took place at night. The best part were the watercolour illustrations that made the story come alive. The ending was a bit of a downer though. I wish Seong-Ji’s soul searching would’ve lead to a positive outcome. The open end left too many questions.

“The night rebalances things and disturbs our senses. We see things differently. The night lets us behave in ways that can surprise us.”

Samir Dahmani’s graphic novel is a coming of age story about two friends Seong-ji and Ji-won. They are excited about this new chapter in their lives of starting university in Seoul. They swear to stay in close touch with each other however when they move they barely keep in touch. Seong-ji tries to make peace with the distance between them. Being busy with study and her over night job at a grocery store, it introduces her to an intriguing women who opens Seong-ji’s eyes to a dream like world where she explores those hidden places where she discovers more about herself.

Firstly the beautiful water colour illustrations worked very well with telling this story. Especially during those moments of dream like visions where Seong-ji comes to realise why her life has turned out the way it did.

The reality of transition from childhood to adulthood is heavily explored and through those moments of self reflection it’s easy for the reader to relate to this part of Seong-ji’s struggle.

A touching tale told through beautiful imagery.

Rating: 4 leaves out of 5
-Characters: 4/5
-Cover(+art): 3/5
-Story: 5/5
-Writing: 5/5
Genre: Contemporary, LGBT
-Contemporary: 5/5
-LGBT: 2/5
Type: Graphic Novel
Worth?: Yeah

Want to thank Netgalley and publishers for giving me the chance to read this book.

This was so good but so damn depressing at the same time. The characters are haunting and it even makes you wonder if they aren't ghost just wandering about. I majorly felt so damn sad but in such a beautiful way.

I really enjoyed reading this book.
Every day that passes since I finished reading it, I like it more and more. I'm really surprised by the way it's growing on me.
Because of the theme, the way it is approached, the subtlety with which it was demonstrated, and how all of it was conveyed through the drawings.
It talks about friendship, and how circumstances can end those friendships. I loved the topic. It's something that happens a lot, but few talk about.
I really liked the component that touches on magical realism, something between surreal and dreamlike at times.
The illustrations are beautiful. So stunning.
I loved reading the book and the theme was very important. Learning to let go, in a way.

I really loved it.

Seoul Before Sunrise follows Seong-ji, a Korean student from a coastal town who is about to graduate and enter college. She grew up with a childhood friend, Ji-won, and she feels anxious about not staying in touch. Though Ji-won reassures her, but they go months without talking. Seong-ji counts the days since they last speak to eachother, until she meets a beautiful woman who helps her realize her sexuality, and how the common person struggles to wrap their head around someone who is different from them.

This is uncommon coming of age story, where it ends on more of a bittersweet note rather than an uplifting one. It explores heartbreak, discovering your own sexuality, and finding yourself. Anyone who has lost a friend after confessing their feelings for them might find themselves with wet faces by the time they reach the end.

Although the plot did not particularly excite me, the artwork is magnificent. This book tells the story of Seong-Ji, a young college student who strives to discover who she really is and how she fell away from a close friend. She meets a woman twice her age who spends her nights painting and taking pictures of other people's empty homes while working the night shift at the grocery store. This person begins to change Seong-Ji's perspective on the world.

There was neither novelty nor excitement for me in this story because it instantly brought to mind the well-known Korean film 3-Iron. Since the ending was sudden, I was unaffected. I consider the possibility of Volume 2 in mind while I write my criticism, as it appears like there is room for improvement in the plot.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Humanoids Inc | Life Drawn for providing the ARC of the graphic novel to reviewers.

3.5 stars rounded up

Gorgeous artwork, kinda weird coming of age story.
Seong-Ji life takes her in a different direction than her best friend and she rediscovers who she is when she meets a surreal lady that comes into the convenient store she is working at.

The ending was a little strange and will probably have me thinking about it for a while.

Thanks to netgalley and humanoids inc for an eARC

Originally released in France in 2023, Seoul Before Sunrise follows Seong-ji, a teenage girl from a small coastal town in Korea, as she transitions from high school into university, where she lives alone in Seoul. The book opens with her confiding to her childhood friend Ji-won that she is worried they will lose touch once they graduate and attend different schools in the big city. Her friend assures her they won’t. Ji-won is bright and jovial, spritely and vain. Seong-ji, meek and shy, follows in her wake, succumbing to pressure to undergo plastic surgery on her nose after graduation. She quiets her fears for Ji-won’s sake. Maybe she is wrong to worry.

But the friend does not call. Seong-ji is alone, working nights at a convenience store in the city to pay her tuition. She counts the days since the last time they spoke.

French writer/artist Samir Dahmani taps into recognizable teenage angst and the feelings of separation and dissociation that can occur in times of transition when we are young. After high school, after college, on summer breaks, I felt like I was looking on at a world and people who would go on living without me as I muddled through existence. I felt forgotten and abandoned. I waited for a text or a Facebook chat, an invitation to be permitted into people’s lives. But I was staring through a window of a laptop or phone screen, projecting onto their lives a perception of reality. And it was a life and story without me in it. How could I intrude? 

Dahmani’s use of large panels and impressionist-painted cityscapes allows us to sit with the melodrama of heightened teenage emotions. The wide expanse of the future is looming, awaiting our characters. Dahmani utilizes the same large panels for intimate closeups. We are intruding on Seong-ji’s sorrow. 

In the evening, during the slow hours of the night without customers, Seong-ji observes the ability to see into people’s apartment windows and makes a game of it, guessing at people’s stories and lives as she walks through a daze. “It’s creepy!” she muses. We are peeking through the window of the frame into this vulnerable moment in a young girl’s life. She is isolated and feeling alone, drifting through a life captured in the soft and diffused colors of the watercolor paint. She is unaware of our looking on, just as she believes those she observes are unaware of her.

One night, Seong-ji is drawn in by a mysterious but seemingly friendly stranger, who begins to chat with her during her evening convenience store job. She eventually invites Seong-ji into her world, the city of Seoul at night. This woman, whose name we never learn, challenges Seong-ji to see what the daytime obscures. People talk to her at night, she says. But it is their silence that truly communicates. Where Seong-ji observes from a distance, this woman intrudes–into people’s homes, into their lives. 

“Silence can say a lot. In fact, it can be very talkative when you know how to  listen.”

This is a quiet book. The word balloons second to the visuals. The landscapes and backgrounds consume the page, the mundane details of the convenience store and apartment meticulous but out of focus. 

The story follows Seong-ji as she further isolates herself, living as a phantom between her own world and that of everyone else. She becomes an observer drifting through the city of Seoul, caught up in the wave of this woman’s intense isolation. 

The stranger encourages Seong-ji to count by nights, not days. “The night rebalances things,” she tells her. She finds a new life of clandestine evening adventure–away from the bright optimism of her childhood friend and the belief that nothing will ever change. Everything changes, as she had feared before leaving for university. But at least she is experiencing something, being a part of people’s lives in some way now.

But even this strange friendship between outsiders is tenuous. When Seong-ji realizes that her feeling of loneliness is not merely missing a friend but a much deeper longing, she admits it to both of the women in her life, each of whom is hurt and rejects her in different ways. It further disconnects her from the light of day. She sees herself fully as a passing phantom, an observer and voyeur who does not belong among people. 

The book ends on a bizarre epilogue that shows what Seong-ji could be if she abandons her connection to others, and is not true to who she is. A bitter, stunted woman of middle age, who manipulates and abandons others like herself.

There is something to be said about the understated emotion of this book, which is captured so powerfully in the painted style. It would be difficult to classify this cleanly as a “coming of age” story, as Seong-ji’s journey feels so incomplete. Perhaps it is better to consider it a cautionary tale, a story of the dangers of defining ourselves by external measures, of living our lives vicariously through windows and forgetting to truly experience life. There is a quiet tragedy to this story that wiggles into your mind, a somber gray cloud that affixes to your soul for a time. But it still feels incomplete, as if a critical part of Seong-ji’s journey was left untold. Ji-won is a cypher, mostly absent from the book, and what little we do see of her is unpleasant. Dahmani relies on us feeling the depths of Seong-ji’s longing and isolation. But it does not seem like a loss to us.

In the end, the lesson our protagonist learns is unclear. Perhaps that is the point–Is she doomed to the fate we see in the epilogue? It’s a bleak spin on the coming of age. But not everyone can overcome their darkness, and find themselves trapped in the perpetual evening, with nothing to listen to but the silence.

I really enjoyed the art style and the story definitely went in a way I wasn’t expecting, this was both a disturbing and beautiful reading experience

I like this book at first, because it shows the Korean culture, especially for teenage girls. But suddenly it became so creepy somehow.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me to read an advance copy of this novel in exchange for my honest opinion! Anyone who has ever lost a friend (by your choice or theirs), is going to cry when they read this beautiful story! I love the watercolor-esque style of art and the FMC really resonated with me. I would love to read more books by this author!

This was a very contemplative book, the main character had a best friend, and since high school is ending she goes with her best friend have a rhinoplasty, not really because she wanted, but because she didn’t want to be alone, well with the ending of high school, is time to go to the university, and with that comes the promise to keep in touch and get together as soon as possible… but people when they leave the nest they search for other things… and people naturally grow apart… it is sad... but it is life…

I did enjoy the drawing, and the scenery brought to life within the pages of this comic book, reminded me of real life drama places, and made me think about people who stayed behind or went ahead for any reason, and life brought us to different places, its a book that will make you think about your own life, and for that reason I loved it and I cant recommend it enough.

Thank you Netgalley and Humanoids Inc | Life Drawn, for the free ARC, and this is my honest opinion.

Thank you Netgalley and Humanoids Inc for a copy of Seoul Before Sunrise in exchange for a honest review!

Seoul Before Sunrise follows a young girl, Seong-ji, who has recently started college, but is stuck in the past, thinking about her past friendship with Ji-won.

This was a sad and simple short story centered around loneliness and loss of friendships. The artwork wa absolutely gorgeous and unlike any other graphic novel or manga I’ve ever read!

The plot and narration didn’t really stuck out to me though, and I think the story could have been elaborated on more. I didn’t love the ending; I definitely wanted to see more of Seong-ji ‘cause she was just a really nice girl.

Cute, lovely short story about queer heartbreak and discovery, and loss.

Not really my sort of story. The artwork is okay, and the story is fine, but it is very melancholy. I felt very uncomfortable reading it because the gloominess of the artwork and story gave me the sense that something terrible was going to happen throughout. Nothing scary or super sad happened, but I started to wonder if it was going to be something more like a horror or crime story (it isn't).
It's fine, just not my cup of tea.

I ended up putting this book down. Maybe the full scope of the story would have been worth it, if I had finished it. It felt like that type of story arch where it would have paid of in the end, when you had the entire picture of everything. But as it was, I found myself getting bored by the story and drifting off in my thoughts. I chose not to invest more energy in trying to engage with the book. There are simply too many great books out there for that.