A LitHub and Largehearted Boy Best Book of the Year A LGBTQ Book That Will Change The Literary Landscape in 2021 — O, The Oprah Magazine A Vulture Best Short Book "Piercing. It shook me, and it made me see.”—Victor LaValle Summer 1999. Long Island, New York. Bored, restless, and lonely, Ali never expected her life would change as dramatically as it did the day she walked into the local Stop & Shop. But she’s never met anyone like Justine, the store’s cashier. Justine is so tall and thin she looks almost two-dimensional, and there’s a dazzling mischief in her wide smile. “Her smile lit me up and exposed me all at once,” Ali admits. “Justine was the light shining on me and the dark shadow it cast, and I wanted to stand there forever in the relief of that contrast.” Ali applies for a job on the spot, securing a place for herself in Justine’s glittering vicinity. As Justine takes Ali under her wing, Ali learns how best to bag groceries, what foods to eat (and not to eat), how to shoplift, who to admire, and who she can become outside of her cold home, where her inattentive grandmother hardly notices the changes in her. Ali becomes more and more fixated on Justine, reshaping herself in her new idol’s image, leading to a series of events that spiral from superficial to seismic. Justine , Forsyth Harmon’s illustrated debut, is an intimate and unflinching portrait of American girlhood at the edge of adulthood—one in which obsession hastens heartbreak. Gr 9 Up-Francesca Lia Block's Weetzie Bat meets Laurie Halse Anderson's Wintergirls in this short illustrated novel set in the 1990s. When Ali first meets pale, skinny Justine at a grocery store, she is instantly infatuated. Unsure if she wants to be with her or to be her, Ali takes a cashier job at the same store just to be near Justine. The two girls quickly form an intense friendship based on a shared love of supermodel trivia and weight loss tips. Ali-renamed Alison-molds herself in Justine's image, ingratiating herself with her friends, losing weight, and joining her on increasingly risky shoplifting adventures. The only parental figure Ali has is her Swedish grandmother, too preoccupied with Days of Our Lives to notice her granddaughter's downward spiral. Ali comes to enjoy the vestigial power of living in Justine's orbit, but struggles to understand the true nature of their relationship. This slight novel, punctuated with black-and-white line drawings, glides along in a stream-of-consciousness style with numerous tangents as the girls and their friends relate often through one-upmanship in their pop culture trivia knowledge. Harmon's combination of first-person narrative and illustrations makes this work feel akin to a real teenager's diary or sketchbook. There are scenes of sex, drug use, bulimia, and self-harm. VERDICT This novel is likely to appeal to older teens as well as adults, to whom the many details of a late 1990s adolescence may appeal.-Ann Foster, Saskatoon P.L., Sask.α(c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. This terrifyingly relatable illustrated novel is a portrait of teenage infatuation between girls in 1990s Long Island, when heroin chic ruled. This is captured with unsparing prose and evocative black and white illustrations by the author. . . . Expect a lot of the kind of unacceptable violence teen girls learn to accept, and a lot of Mariah Carey, Tamagotchi, and Smirnoff.—Glamour, Best Books of March Justine demands your attention. The slim novel is populated with line drawings that require you to look. The image and the text vibrate together and apart, requiring the reader to find the connections, to excavate hard-earned truths. —The Believer Crackling with the swift and satisfying fizz of Pop Rocks and Diet Coke, Harmon's first novel. . . . acutely captures that time in one's life when imitation feels like the sincerest form of freedom.—O, The Oprah Magazine This is a beautifully illustrated and unique text—both supplied by Harmon—that explores the tender, excruciating and exhilarating experiences of girlhood, love, obsession and coming of age.—Ms. Magazine A compact but powerful illustrated novel. . . . a bittersweet, nostalgic coming-of-age story.—BuzzFeed The perfect read for lovers of ‘90s zine culture and coming-of-age stories.—Huffpost Books A book that has the breezy intimacy of a ’90s zine, with narration that is alternately withholding and searing—and altogether haunting.—Guernica A short, unflinching book. I read it one morning over coffee and felt consistently shocked by it.—Bitch Magazine A quiet thrill ride of a novel you won’t want to miss.—Bustle, Most Anticipated Books of March A painfully and painstakingly accurate representation of growing up . . . caught between the wealth of neighborhoods you don’t live in and friends you don’t really have.—Full Stop Powerful. . . . Harmon’s minimalist drawings [open] up more paths to un