Back in 2023 Hockey Girl Loves Drama Boy by Faith Erin Hicks came out. It seemed to not get the attention that other graphic novels by her seemed to get. Or at least, I didn’t see the push for it. Which is sad, since it is a fun book with romance, theater, hockey, and how it relates to life. Hicks weaves an interesting story together that gets you thinking. There were a couple of bumps in the flow for me, but overall, it was a good story. However, there was some bullying and homophobia, but it’s done as tastefully as that can be presented.
The fun part of things is that the “roles” of the characters are reversed. The Hockey Person is the gal and the Drama Kid is the guy. There is LGBTQ elements (our Drama Boy is queer, though he has only dated guys up to now, he’s all over whomever he loves) and some of the drama kids present as queer as well. The fact that it is Hockey (a male sport) is turned around as the team of the book is one of only two all female teams in their area. Of course, within the story this does cause some conflict as Hockey Girl and Drama Boy do not “fit” society’s mold. It is them Versus the world: a “boy” should want girls, not be gay; a “girl” should not be tall, take up space, play hockey. And with our male character, who presents as pansexual, you “should” choose one or the other, not be dating Guys then a Gal (he even does “Doing Gay” the “wrong” way).
Of course, there are the usual growing pains, coming to terms with who you are, how you react and interact with people, finding love, finding your family, and the usual coming of age goodies. There are numerous areas where things are very realistic. SPOILER: the adults can be selfish (human) and one doesn’t do anything to help the bullied kid and in fact basically blames her and bribes her to keep quiet, parents just don’t “get it” and nothing happens to the bullies.
So, that part was interesting to the adult brain. The teen brain said, “Nice story. Got a bit of lovin’ going on. And whatcha know? And Girls in Sports. Nifty” (okay, my brain said that, most teens won’t say nifty). Both brains said the illustrations are pure Hicks, but maybe not as fun as I would have liked. They were simpler, not simplistic, but details could be minimal. And in fact, there were a couple of places where two of the female characters were practically twins and I was unable to tell who was giving who the stink eye.
In the end, it is a cozy read. I won’t stop loving Hicks, but maybe Hockey Girl and Drama Boy needed another inning to make a touchdown for me.
BINGO VERSUS cbr18bingo (girl and boy VERSUS the way society thinks how they “should be”) and (how I feel about this book VERSUS their others)
