Title: Bloom
Author: Kevin Panetta
Illustrator: Savanna Ganucheau
Type: Fiction, Graphic Novel
Genre: YA, LGBT
Publisher: First Second (Macmillan)
Published: February 12, 2019

A physical copy of this book was kindly provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Now that high school is over, Ari is dying to move to the big city with his ultra-hip band―if he can just persuade his dad to let him quit his job at their struggling family bakery. Though he loved working there as a kid, Ari cannot fathom a life wasting away over rising dough and hot ovens. But while interviewing candidates for his replacement, Ari meets Hector, an easygoing guy who loves baking as much as Ari wants to escape it. As they become closer over batches of bread, love is ready to bloom . . . that is, if Ari doesn’t ruin everything.

Writer Kevin Panetta and artist Savanna Ganucheau concoct a delicious recipe of intricately illustrated baking scenes and blushing young love, in which the choices we make can have terrible consequences, but the people who love us can help us grow.

I was only going to read a few pages from Bloom, just out of curiosity, and then found that I had read through it all in the span of an hour. From the start, I felt invested in Ari and Hector’s well-being, and really rooted for them. I also shipped them right away, which of course made me feel even more invested in the story. One of the first observations that I made was that I really like Savanna Ganucheau’s artistic style (just as I like the style of her sister, Paulina Ganucheau, the artist for the Zodiac Starforce series).

The aesthetic of a graphic novel or comic book matters almost as much to me as the quality of it the story itself. I am a very visual person, and I have to enjoy what I am looking at. I can’t count how many animes, mangas, comic books, and graphic novels I’ve rejected because I didn’t like the drawing style, haha. This might be superficial of me, but it’s just how I am with these things. But back to Bloom. It was very aesthetically pleasing for me, and the story kept me engaged as well. And did I mention that it’s an LGBT graphic novel? Well, it is, and it made me very happy. I definitely recommend.

THANK YOU FOR READING MY REVIEW! HAVE YOU READ THIS BOOK? WHAT DID YOU THINK? AND IF YOU HAVEN’T READ IT YET, DO YOU WANT TO, OR NOT? HOW COME? LET ME KNOW YOUR THOUGHTS IN THE COMMENTS!

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