Some triggers to mental health issues, self-harm and eating disorders.
Heartstopper Volumes One to Four are now out. And when Volume Five arrives, this will be the last book. So do I wait or try and finish on WebToons, as now I really want to know what happens with the gang!
In Volume Three of Alice Oseman’s series of Nick and Charlie, two teens who find each other and find out about themselves we start to expand outside the school setting and into Paris, where Charlie’s secret comes out. Charlie has issues with eating. At first, it seems like he is just anxious about eating in front of others, like he just needs some time to be “okay”, but we quickly learn (especially by book four) that Charlie has serious eating issues. At the same time, we are learning about some of the other characters that we have come to know throughout the other books, and we see Nick and his father’s relationship. The fun part of the books is that as Charlie and Nick learn about each other, we the reader learn, too.
In Volume Four we are now following what happened in the months after the Paris trip and the Paris Gang starting to make their own friend group, their own teen-family of support. In mostly journal entries of Nick and Charlie on New Years Eve, we learn how Charlie needs to get help. How Nick learns that he cannot “save” Charlie just with love or being his boyfriend. We see how the dynamics of the friend group expands. We see the serious passion these two boyfriends have for each other. The burning really hot, that honeymoon stage. And finally, we see the big The Families Meet dinner where there are dogs, food, and drama.
And, Oseman has the addition of Charlie’s sister, Tori, and her involvement in the story is more obvious and not just a supporting character as she has been. Her story is alluded to, making me wonder how much overlap is happening between Heartstopper and Tori’s novels and how much of Charlie’s story overlaps in hers.
I enjoy that this story is multilayered. Oseman does not focus just on one level of the story, (such as just the romance of Nick and Charlie throughout the four volumes) but follows a realistic approach to being a kid today and covers many things. In volume three we were introduced to Charlie’s eating issues, and in four we follow up with that. The connections to the stories are also a nice way and flow without losing anything.
