Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me: Book Review
In this article, Averie talks about Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me, even though it made her cry.
Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me: Book Review
By Averie Black
*Content Warning* This article contains major spoilers for Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me by Markio Tamaki, as well as mentions of abortion, sexual assault, and toxic relationships.
On May 7, 2019, author Markio Tamaki and illustrator Rosemary Valero-O’Connell graced the reading community with their award-winning graphic novel Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me. This book is a wonderful representation of the impacts of unhealthy relationships across all areas of someone's life. It also includes LGBT+ representation and subjects that are usually touchy in young adult books.
Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me is a heartfelt graphic novel following 17-year-old Freddy Riley and her on-and-off relationship with one Laura Dean. While Freddy spends her time with her small group of tight-knit friends and unusual hobbies, like thrifting stuffed animals just to sew them into strange creatures, Laura Dean is a popular socialite who has broken up with Freddy multiple times just to come back to her again, and again. Freddy gets desperate and begins emailing an advice columnist about her situation and uses it as an outlet for everything that has been going on. As strange as it feels to say, it is almost refreshing to see an LGBT+ relationship shown as messy, unhealthy, and like a realistic high school relationship between two very different people. This relationship Freddy has with Laura Dean affects her mentally, as well as affecting the other relationships in her life, which is the core of the story.
It is hard to talk about the writing style of a graphic novel since most of the action is portrayed through the art. Luckily, it still contains story and dialogue. The first praiseworthy writing choice is the narration. Throughout the novel, Freddy is writing to an advice columnist, which also acts as the narration as Freddy details how they first met and the background of the situation. The author was not fully relying on visual cues and hoping the reader would pick up on context, which is good because a lot of people can not do that, but it is also not throwing it in the reader's face through unnatural dialogue. It is very smooth. Another good writing choice is the fact that all of the teenagers talk like real teenagers. There are horror stories of older authors being out of touch and trying to implement slang into their writing, with it coming out incredibly clunky and almost like an insult to teen-speak, but Laura Dean Keep Breaking Up with Me maintains a good balance of slang and added works such as “like” with regular conversation.
‘“Eric. My love. Strong, powerful women were an 80s thing. B*****s in heels, baby. Sequins for the gods!’
‘Buddy. My love. When did you start saying for the gods?’
‘Last week.”’
It is a slow-paced story, which can be super annoying to some people, but all of the visuals give it enough to look at for it to not drag down the story. Besides, it is meant to be sweet and sentimental, other books like The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky and This One Summer, which was also written by Tamaki, have similar tone and pacing to Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me. While there is a lot of drama and emotional impact, the story also allows a lot of room to breathe. There are panels of Freddy reflecting while laying in bed, or glimpses into the life of her best friend, Doodle. Personally, this does not seem like a problem since the vibes carry through, but it may bore some less attentive readers.
The art was obviously beautiful. Valero-O’Connell used a color palette of blacks, whites, grays, and the most fun, light pink. The pink was an excellent choice. It makes everything that needs to pop... pop. The pastel tone of it both contrasts the emotional journey of Freddy and serious topics and plays wonderfully against the rest of the dark palette. The character designs are all cute and unique with different body shapes, races, and clothing styles. Even the background characters have distinct personalities. Another nice thing is that the characters wear a lot of queer-coded styles. Of course, clothes do not have labels and there is no such thing as “queer clothes” and “straight clothes”, but there are styles more common within the LGBT+ community. Doodle seems to prefer androgynous clothes, Laura Dean prefers masculine/androgynous clothes, and Buddy prefers eccentric clothing.
A great thing about this book is that it is queer without being about being queer. It seems like, when there are literary conflicts within LGBT+ relationships, they tend to center around being closeted or insecure in their sexuality. In the hit movie GBF, the conflict in the queer relationship is that one person is out and the other is not. There are an endless number of TV shows, movies, and books that focus on this troupe. In their defense, it is something that nearly every queer person goes through but, at some point, the community does not need any more emotionally draining coming out stories; they need stories that casually feature queer characters, but don’t center around their queerness. From the cover of Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me, the reader may expect the girl with the long hair peeking around the corner to be the feminine “straight-looking” girl who keeps breaking up with the more “queer-looking” girl with short hair. However, this is surprisingly not the case at all. Freddy, who is more feminine and has long hair, is not any more or less queer than Laura Dean, who looks more typically sapphic. It is also refreshing to see Laura Dean be popular and a bit of a player despite being openly queer.
The morals of Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me were great, maybe a little too on the nose, but great. Freddy never fell out of love with Laura Dean, despite the way she was treating her, and the way Laura Dean made Freddy treat her friends, they still loved each other. This is just one of the reasons why it was hard to see Freddy break up with her in the end, even though that is what the audience was rooting for the entire time. Growing up in a generation where many were taught that the power of love can stop all wars and end all conflict, it feels like a fresh perspective to say otherwise. When the advice columnist finally writes Freddy back, she gives her a piece of advice, “Polyamorous or monogamous, your love should be a thing that brings something to you. It's true that giving can be a part of love. But, contrary to popular belief, love should never take from you, Freddy.” Love was not enough to keep them from cheating on each other, or pulling each other from their friends, or ignoring each other in favor of other people. Freddy and Laura Dean loved each other selfishly and, in a way, that reflects a lot of high school relationships and first loves. Despite having feelings for one another, Freddy recognized that those feelings did not need to be acted on.
The other notable part of the story is Doodle. Doodle is Freddy’s best friend and the person who is primarily being replaced by Laura Dean. Throughout the graphic novel in those little, quiet moments, there are often panels of Doodle being alone and solemn while Freddy is with Laura Dean. Once they reconcile, it is revealed why Doodle was so upset that Freddy was gone, on top of already being abandoned. Doodle got pregnant from her Dungeons and Dragons master– an adult man. This really was not addressed as thoroughly as it should have been. There was foreshadowing earlier in the book that set up this idea. While Doodle was with Freddy in gym class, she questioned the age of consent and talking about intercourse but, after it was revealed who the father was, the characters did not really talk about the fact it was ephebophilia or illegal. Doodle made comments about him being a married man, but they acted as if his being married was the shocking part. Tamaki otherwise handled the topic well--especially when Doodle got an abortion. However, not mentioning the fact that the relationship was nonconsensual is not a great example for a young adult book. If Tamaki did not plan to address the fact that it was a relationship between an adult and a child, then she could just as easily have made the father a student and not have to change anything.
On Goodreads, Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me has 3.87 stars and nearly 60k ratings. This is a little lower than the average rating, but not wildly low. It was also nominated for the Goodreads Choice Award for Best Graphic Novels and Comics in 2019. While scrolling through the low-star reviews, it seems like the same complaints come up. The first is that it is slow. Which it is. If The Perks of Being a Wallflower was a sludge to get through, then this one would be too, but that is not so much this book's issue as it is the genre. Coming-of-age stories typically are slow, have lingering shots, and are generally plotless. That is kind of the point of the genre. Another common critique is that they had a toxic relationship. Heidi Wang said, "Everything Laura Dean did or how Freddy responded made me so disappointed and I died a little every time. There were times I had to mentally and physically take a break from the book after reading Laura Dean’s incredible amount of gaslighting and how she was SUCH a bad girlfriend to Freddy." Which, once again, is the whole point. Laura Dean is not supposed to be a likable character and it is not supposed to make sense why Freddy keeps going back to her. It is the cycle of abuse. It should make the audience uncomfortable to read. Most other complaints are about Doodle and the pedo which is completely valid, and people who do not enjoy graphic novels.
Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me is a good book that requires a particular taste. Although it is not without its flaws, the relationships are complex, and it has pretty art, which is good enough for the Goodreads Choice Awards.
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Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me
