Review: "Freshman Year" by Sarah Mai

Freshman Year by Sarah Mai
Published February 2024 via Christy Ottaviano Books
★★★

Oh, the trials and tribulations that come with freshman year: <i>Freshman Year</i> follows Sarah through her first year at university as she goes through the usual experiences: roommates and dorm adventures and too much homework and drinking and being sort of independent for the first time. As I understand it, this is a fictionalized version of the author's own experience, but it will be recognizable to just about anyone who has gone off to university.

The book is very well drawn; the story is far more character-based than plot-based. It's not that there's no plot, but in a lot of ways this is everywoman's journey through the (American) university experience, and so the plot tends to stick to small-scale things. I'd probably have appreciated this quite a lot as a teenager, but as an adult I found it rather slow going. (I read this over a couple of weeks and may have missed some things, like why Sarah's mother uses a wheelchair—I thought MS but then she says something about relearning to walk, which makes me think accident—or why Sarah has been to so many funerals.) The quality is there, just not quite what I'm looking for in a graphic novel at this time. Recommended for teens, especially those who have a bit of trepidation as they head off to college.