Don't Go Without Me and Laura Dean Keep Breaking Up with Me: A Rosemary Valero-O'Connell Endorsement

 

Graphic Novel Artist recommendation by: Gabby

As a person who’s recently only been able to read graphic novels without having to take at least a month to get through them, I thought that ending off my blog posts with another recommendation of one would be a good idea, this time however, of the actual artist themself. 

Rosemary Valero-O’Connell is a comic artist who currently has about 2 graphic novels: Don’t Go Without Me and Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me. I started my experience with her art by first reading Laura Dean, and it was a wonderful experience to read from start to finish. Seeing as this is mainly an artist recommendation and not one for the books themselves (though i’m still going to promote those) I won’t go too far into the book’s plot, but I will give a basic summary. Frederica “Freddy” Riley is 17 years old, in high school, and currently going through a toxic on-off relationship with the one Laura Dean. The narration of the story is told through Freddy’s emails to the local medium Seek-Her and the responses of the help group. The plot of said graphic novel was done by Mariko Tamaki, and while I would have likely already enjoyed the book as a novel, Valero-O’Connell’s artwork added to the storyline made it a whole lot more enjoyable for me. 

After reading Laura Dean, I spent the next few days scouring the internet for more of Valero-O’Connell’s works. Unfortunately, there weren't many, and the only other actual book that I could find was Don’t Go Without Me, so I wanted to read that one as soon as possible. Don’t Go Without Me is a graphic novel with 3 separate short illustrated stories in it. The first, with a title the same as the graphic novel itself, is about a girl attempting to find her girlfriend after losing her on a border to a magical realm where the inhabitants feed on her memories. The second, What is Left, is about a woman named Isla as she falls in love with her shipmate Kelo through the memories of their recently destroyed spaceship. The last, Con Temor, Con Ternura, is about the lives of the population of a town that lives near a sleeping giant, constantly alert for the fear that one day it may awaken and end their lives.

Both Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me and Don’t Go Without Me are wonderful graphic novels which I would give a 20/10 rating if I could. I would highly recommend them to anybody who’s looking for any new queer graphic novels to read soon!!