Broken is a gentle story of a little girl with big feelings rendered in soft layered colored pencil. This story is simple, but soothing, and a reminder that what’s broken can always be fixed (and to perhaps not trust cats, who are always up to something).
Broken by X. Fang, (List Price: $18.99, Tundra Books, 9781774882009, October 2025)
Reviewed by Julie Jarema, Hub City Bookshop in Spartanburg, South Carolina
Cannon by Lee Lai is a blow to the nervous system with cathartic aftershocks. Through gorgeous linework, paneling, and speech bubble placement, Cannon portrays a pressure cooker of circumstances for “stoic” protagonist Cannon/Lucy, in her relationships (platonic, romantic, and familial), stressful restaurant job, and attempts to keep everything under control (even as she’s seeing birds) in the form of going on runs while listening to breathing meditation podcasts. I sweated. I felt too seen. I devoured it.
Cannon by Lee Lai, (List Price: $29.95, Drawn and Quarterly, 9781770468023, September 2025)
Reviewed by Julie Jarema, Hub City Bookshop in Spartanburg, South Carolina
What a pair! Thrilled to see Mariko Tamaki and Nicole Goux team up for This Place Kills Me, bringing together their signature skills in creating wonderful misfit weird girls to this beautifully drawn, dark, theatrical mystery. Set at an all-girls boarding school in the ’80s/’90s, I couldn’t put this book down as the secrets of the Wilberton Theatrical Society spilled out in devastating and compelling ways.
This Place Kills Me by Mariko Tamaki, (List Price: $26.99, Abrams Fanfare, 9781419768460, August 2025)
Reviewed by Julie Jarema, Hub City Bookshop in Spartanburg, South Carolina
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This book is a treat (just look at that art!), especially for fans of Frog & Toad who are ready for a bigger adventure. Luis (the guitar playing bear) & Pablo (the grumpy mole) are an odd pair of buddies that must brave their way to The Big City to in an attempt to experience *culture* and fine dining (versus the usual catch your own meal way of the woods) and not get mugged by rough and tough city squirrels with spoons in this hilarious, pitch perfect, highbrow-lowbrow tale that will leave you singing a song and giggling all the way through.
Into the Bewilderness by Gus Gordon, (List Price: $15.99, HarperAlley, 9780063246119, July 2025)
Reviewed by Julie Jarema, Hub City Bookshop in Spartanburg, South Carolina
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Don’t know if it’s the dire days of 2025 or what, but I had to laugh (so as not to cry?) while reading Spent, which felt bleakly, hysterically absurdist, a parody/satire but not without care and all too true in the way it represents the daily buzzing oversaturated mania of the hypercurrent time we live in. Poking fun at cliches of those aligned on far and opposite ends of the political spectrum, Bechdel, with humor, tugs at the impossible and insane moral quandaries of trying to make meaning, make art, make anything–focus! while everyone is drowning in “content” and grabbing at shredded attention spans and money while the world burns/floods/landslides (terrifyingly apocalyptic to realize that we’re in this dystopia NOW) and ethical consumption (and maybe ethical anything) is impossible. And yet…I enjoyed reading Spent, couldn’t look away from the train wreck we’re in. It doesn’t land hopelessly either, but instead lets go of grandiosity and the large scale, landing on the fact that we are still here and we’ve got to take care of each other in the day-to-day.
Spent by Alison Bechdel, (List Price: $32, Mariner Books, 9780063278929, May 2025)
Reviewed by Julie Jarema, Hub City Bookshop in Spartanburg, South Carolina
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As a fan of Craig Mod’s email newsletters of his long (and I mean long) walks through Japan, I was eager to read Things Become Other Things. Accompanied by beautiful black-and-white photos, Craig’s reflections on place, walking, scarcity, grief, and boyhood are filled with love and care. His musings as he grapples with the American town he grew up in, a rough place with limited opportunities or role models, in contrast to similar remote Japanese towns that have much more support and consideration for their citizens, are incredibly relevant.
Things Become Other Things by Craig Mod, (List Price: $31, Random House, 9780593732540, May 2025)
Reviewed by Julie Jarema, Hub City Bookshop in Spartanburg, South Carolina
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The Sato the Rabbit books are pure dreamy playful magic. Through gorgeous vivid spreads, this book makes me want to wake up early, live in a lighthouse, drink sparkles, and let my imagination dance.
Sato the Rabbit, Morning Light by Yuki Ainoya, (List Price: $17.95, Enchanted Lion, 9781592704392, May 2025)
Reviewed by Julie Jarema, Hub City Bookshop in Spartanburg, South Carolina
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Told via a fairytale pitch-perfect unreliable narrator (who continues to shift the story in acquiescence to the ghost chorus), Sour Cherry brings the reader along to witness the hauntings and the haunted, complicit women trapped in violent cycles, and the rot and decay that are apparent when the stories are stripped away. If Angela Carter and Carmen Maria Machado were trapped in House of Leaves, you’d be holding this book in your hands.
Sour Cherry by Natalia Theodoridou, (List Price: $17.95, Tin House Books, 9781963108194, April 2025)
Reviewed by Julie Jarema, Hub City Bookshop in Spartanburg, South Carolina
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