The art was so unique. Watercolor is my favorite. It was a reminder that connection looks different to everyone but is so necessary. It also depicts communication with friends from different cultures so well. Quick and adorable read!

Thank you, Netgalley, the author, IDW Publishing for the gifted e-book! ❤️ #gifted. My review is comprised of my honest thoughts.

Read this book if you like: Sapphic love stories, watercolor style art, cross cultural, cross language, slow burn

This is good! It's so beautifully drawn and well put together. The use of different languages is so interesting. It's a slow burn Sapphic comic that crosses language barriers. I highly recommend it!

Oh what a special story! You'll fall in love with Sarah and Ping, as well as James' watercolor illustrations. A lovely romcom of a book that's reminiscent of a particular storyline found in the movie Love Actually ;)

Love Languages is a sweet graphic novel about Sarah, a young English woman working in Paris. She is dissatisfied with her job and struggling to learn French. On a random trip out of her apartment, Sarah meets another expat, Ping who is a working as a nanny after leaving Hong Kong. Sarah and Ping patch together communication through their limited French and begin learning some of each other's native languages.

Sarah and Ping bond in a unique way, and the book highlights the communication struggle and beauty of this connection. I felt that as a friendship story it was beautiful and believable, as a romance it was a bit too insta-love for me. The art is beautifully painted, but again isn't totally in line with my personal taste.

I'm glad I read this and I think it will be enjoyable for many readers of adult graphic novels.

I adored the romance in this one and the artwork. However, I disliked the format of the chat, the way they displayed the various different languages, it was hard for me to follow. Thank you for the early copy!

"Love Languages" is a sweet, tender story about two women who stumble across each other and bond over the specific, bittersweet feelings that you only experience when you are far from home in a foreign city. Their conversations are a mosaic of English, French and Cantonese and they eventually discover that the language of love...is both found in between all these spoken languages but also that it transcends them.

I loved the art style. The watercolours really helped convey the characters' emotions - for example, how Sarah seemed to float through her life in Paris due to her sense of alienation. And the little details in the art! Amazing! The fact that before meeting Ping, most of the elements are drawing in cold tones, with an abundance of blue, which slowly turn to warm tones once Ping becomes a presence in her life.

Another very unique element of this book is the way that language was visually portrayed. How, in the beginning, the phrases that Sarah didn't understand where also not translated in English, so we were also privy to the same distance created by the language barrier. How the English translation was always outside of the speech bubbles, until Sarah and Ping finally grasped the mosaic they used and fully understood each other, and then English was no longer "a second layer" but the main language.

What made me give it 4 stars was the fact that the romantic aspect felt a bit rushed towards the end of the book. We were shown how Sarah and Ping grew close and fond of each other, but in a very platonic way, and the romantic aspect seemed to appear almost out of the blue.

All in all, it is a beautiful story with lovely illustrations, and the book is so worth it!

Thank you NetGalley for the e-ARC!

4.5

I very much enjoyed this story of two people who meet in Paris & who's first language is something other than French yet somehow manage to become friends & more.

Sarah Huxley has moved to Paris from London to Paris for a corporate job & Ping Loh is working as an Au Pair for a family of Hong Kong expats. Neither speaks French very well & so they end up communicating in a mixture of English, Cantonese, French & emojis.

The street scenes of Paris are delightfully illustrated & the scenes showing Sarah & Ping's attempts to communicate are very cleverly done.
As I read I laughed, smiled & sighed in enjoyment & content.

Thanks to netgalley & Top Shelf for an advance copy of this title

Lovely watercolors do a fantastic job of expressing the highs and lows of this sweet story. Blues and yellows are used to great effect, emphasizing the loneliness felt by Sarah in her corporate job, and the brightness brought to her life by Ping. The style of text and speech bubbles worked well for conveying the initial stop-and-go confusion of navigating three languages. At first the narration felt a little slow to me, but as the story progressed I realized how impactful this was while Sarah still feels isolated due to language barriers and a disconnect from colleagues. The way text and conversation changes as fluency grows really drives home the excitement and connection between Sarah and Ping.

I am honestly bummed that I did not enjoy this one. The premise, in itself, is fantastic and I am such a sucker for love against all odds and a story that hones in on culture shock and assimilation into a new and different environment. As someone who was an expat for many years I’d been hoping for a relatable and sweet story but the slow pacing and lack of connection and build between the characters left me wanting more. I also felt that, though the idea of French and Cantonese and English being interwoven in conversations to display the confusion and barriers they both face in France- it was confusing for the reader too. With more often than not the words jumbling up with no true way to follow what is occurring on page when the illustrations don’t always help to guide. Of course, yes, as their relationship grows that becomes less confusing and we see their connection bloom. But I felt almost zero connection for it and I wasn’t rooting for them because there was no baseline. Their friendship made sense to me but their romance did not which I think can be contributed to the fact that I also really struggled to get inside Sarah’s head as a reader and I wonder if this story would’ve benefited from being a novel where the focus was on Sarah’s feelings and experiences in her own brain.

Je suis un peu mitigée sur cette lecture. La thématique de la barrière de la langue quand on s'installe dans un pays qui n'est pas notre langue natale était plutôt prometteuse et m'intéressait beaucoup, m'étant retrouvée dans cette situation lors de mon année d'échange aux USA. Saisir les nuances, le rythme, l'argot, etc. Cependant j'ai trouvé l'écriture très brouillon : c'était une idée intéressante de superposer les trois langues - français, anglais et cantonais, mais ça devenait vite illisible. Le parallèle avec le fait d'avoir du mal à se comprendre est cependant assez pertinent, mais ça freinait beaucoup ma lecture.
Quand j'ai lu la BD, j'avais un peu oublié le résumé et pour moi la "romance" est arrivée un peu comme un cheveu sur la soupe - bon, j'étais heureuse que ça soit le cas, mais en vrai ça me paraissait bizarrement amené.
Finalement, la fin m'a plus intéressée que le reste.

Before I begin, I’d like to thank NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me to read an early readers copy.

Love languages is a cute little graphic novel about two women who speak different languages coming together learning languages, and more about each other. It was a cute reminder that love can come out of nowhere, wherever you are.

The drawing style and coloring was so beautiful and perfectly captured the beauty of France. I find myself not loving France whenever I'm there, but this graphic novel made me wanna go back to experience the mundanity, the cafes and restaurants, just to have experiences like Sarah and Ping.
I loved how they slowly became closer and we can see them steadily falling for each other. I really wish we could've gotten more from them together.
I really appreciate any sapphic story that's simply a feel good slice of life romance and this one definitely delivered in cuteness while keeping the characters extremely real.
The added layer of languages was what first made me interested in this story, as someone who speaks several languages and also tries to focus on conversations in foreign languages wishing I could understand them.

demorei um pouco para me conectar com a história, pois no início me senti tão perdida quanto a personagem.

o plot em si não é mirabolante, não envolve uma fantasia com nomes demais para recordar e nem um vilão com uma risada esquisita; é simples e bonito. a maneira que você mergulha na história quando as duas se conectam através da língua deixa uma sensação ainda mais prazerosa durante a leitura, e também a forma que as cores se aquecem quando as personagens estão juntas é linda, tudo tem mais vida, mais alegria!

gostaria que tivessem explorado mais o lado romântico delas no final, fiquei com um gostinho de ?quero mais?. achei um pouco apressado e levemente vago mas no geral gostei!

This is a really cute slow-burn sapfic romance graphic novel that uses the language barrier between the characters in an innovative, cool way that includes the reader in a unique way I've never seen before.

Sarah moves from England to France and begins work as a bilingual corporate executive, making the big bucks and using her degree. It's everything she ever wanted. But she's lonely. So lonely, in fact, that a chance encounter with a Chinese woman at the cafe has Sarah clinging to this tiny social connection, hoping to find meaning in her life despite the language barrier.

I like graphic novels with a lot fewer words, but I can't deny that this one was impactful. It brilliantly captures the guilt and hope one feels while trying to adjust to a new language, particularly when the people around you are using a lot of slang or speaking rapidly. I didn't love the ending, but I'm not much of a romantic at heart.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC. All opinions are my own.

This was such a tender and sweet read. The story of two women, Sarah and Ping, who only know a little of each other's language finding connection. The art is intriguing and bright and the story is so lovely, I was smiling through the whole thing. As someone who is multi-lingual but not really fluent I really liked the style that Albom used to portray the broken sentences and mishmashed conversations between Sarah and Ping. A touching story that I highly recommend.

This comic was a little tough for me to get through at first, but I'm glad I stuck with it. In the beginning the pages are very chaotic, probably representing the barrier an unfamiliar language creates, and how stressful it is to constantly try translating things in your head. I appreciated that when the characters started to break through the language barrier, it was a relief to me as well, as the pages became a lot less chaotic to read. The story in itself was pretty sweet as well. The ending did feel a little rushed though, and I personally wish that the first part of the comic had been slightly shorter, as it was hard for me to read it. Overall I liked it, even though some things were not to my taste.

This was such a good book. I loved the story and the writing so much. The characters were great and the story flowed smoothly. Will definitely read more books by this author in the future.

Thank you NetGalley for allowing me to read this eARC!

This was such a wonderful story about two women, both in a foreign city, trying to learn how to understand the other in their language. It was really cute and at times funny as well. The author seems to understand the struggle of learning a new language well and I could really relate to this. For me, though, the ending about the character growth felt a little bit rushed. I think it would have been nice to see a bit more of that before concluding the graphic novel.

And can we talk about the artwork!! It was so beautiful! I loved the watercolour drawings! The colours also really complemented the experiences of Sarah, when she felt alone or when she was out with Ping. And something that was done really well, were the speech bubbles whenever they were talking in another language than English and how these developed over time as Sarah and Ping's relationship and language skills developed.

Would definitely recommend this to everyone!

Both aesthetically and narratively, this is stunning. This is the touching love story of two women - one from England and one from Hong Kong - who have moved to Paris and find comfort in one another amongst the bustling rush of their new lives in France. Written in a gorgeously illustrated patchwork of English, French, and Cantonese, Love Languages is a beautiful story about connection across cultures, finding yourself later in life, and how all of life's complexities can be overcome by the simplicity of love.

The love story between Sarah and Ping is painted in watercolour that reflects both the softness and vibrancy of the relationship between the women. Visually, this is an absolute powerhouse and I cannot recommend it strongly enough for both people looking for an entry into graphic novels or well-versed aficionados of the form.