THE LOVE REPORT

Two middle schoolers set out to investigate what love truly means.

Lola loves love and wants to understand it better now that she has a crush on a classmate. Her best friend, Grace, whose parents’ arguments at home are escalating, has a more cynical view of romance, but she’s still willing to help. So the pair go around school, interviewing couples and gathering gossip about who has a crush on whom. For all the nuanced issues this graphic novel, translated from French, attempts to explore—among them slut-shaming and the pain of first love—too many shallow caricatures remain. Nearly all the boy characters come off as unfeeling, selfish jerks whom girls are justified in mistreating when their feelings aren’t returned. Scattered storylines mix with contradictory takeaways—the boys are rightfully depicted as sexist for ranking the girls by physical attractiveness, but the girls’ decision to reciprocate comes across as justifiable revenge. And even after Lola and Grace realize that Felicity, a beautiful and popular classmate, has hidden depths, Lola still refers to her as a “bimbo.” Further, the boys’ objectification of Felicity is framed as inevitable rather than something to push back against. Many characters have similar facial designs, giving the artwork a generic look. Lola, Felicity, and most other characters present White; Grace is Black.

A superficial and meandering exploration of friendship and love.