Book 2 of the Sheets graphic novel series. My daughters and I recently read the first book a couple weeks ago and really enjoyed it and I immediately added the rest of the series to my library holds list. I was excited for this story and I wasn't disappointed but I also didn't enjoy it.
My kids read this before me and it had them in tears and when I read it, I was upset that they had to read the content matter and be subject to that, but I was also angry because I did not see any trigger warnings for the content.
*****TRIGGER WARNING********
Suicidal thoughts
Bullying
Our main character Marjorie is still working her family's laundromat and getting ready for 8th grade. She is part of a new friend group which consists of the girls that subjected her to bullying in the first book. I was not a fan of that developement, especially when they had their sights set on a girl who was held back named Eliza. She is the daughter of the swim coach and she is considered weird because she is obsessed with ghosts.
She goes around trying to take photos of ghosts and one day she stumbles across Marjorie talking to Wendell who is a ghost. Eliza captures a blur in her photograph. There are sections of when Eliza is in the school dark room and she is describing every single detail of how to develope a picture and how you can mess up a whole role of film. I found these parts incredibly boring and made the assumption that Eliza was on the autism spectrum.
We then learn that she is having suicidal thoughts and she is becoming friends with Wendell because Wendell is feeling abandoned by Marjorie due to her new "friends".
The reveal of Eliza being suicidal hit really close to home because growing up I had those thoughts and earlier this year, my oldest confided in her doctor about death. So not knowing that this was a major plot really got to me and my kids.
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