Ivy

Ivy by Sarah Oleksyk, 219 pages

Ivy is a standalone graphic novel about Ivy Stenova, a high school senior dealing with the usual angst of the teen years: her mom thinks her ideas for art school are crap, she's drifting away from her best friends, nobody understands her. Oleksyk captures that angst quite well, particularly the Ivy-mom relationship. Oleksyk also has some great black-and-white artwork here, punctuated by Ivy's sketchbook art.

The problem with Ivy isn't that it meanders or that what could be a coming-of-age story never really comes of age; rather, the issue is that I didn't really get attached to Ivy before she started getting moody, acting up in class and falling out of touch with everyone. I think I would have enjoyed this more if Oleksyk had given me some idea of what things were like before all that started. Maybe I would have identified with or liked Ivy then, but as it was written, I felt like I was following around a self-centered drama queen. Or maybe my problem is that I'm officially too far from high school to appreciate the story. Who knows, I may have loved this when I was a high school senior.