Review: Renée

Renée by Ludovic Debeurme
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Renee is a haunting graphic novel that follows a number of storylines from Renee's infatuation with a jazz musician to the waiting game Lucille is playing waiting for her beloved Arthur to get out of prison. The artwork is great, a mix of simple and detailed, realistic and surreal to show the characters' complex feeling. I also like that the artist doesn't try to squeeze these twisting plots into panels—that would make this a much different book.

What I wasn't too happy about is that the plot is so complex and doesn't make any sense until you've read 75 percent of the book, then it all seems to click together. I didn't even know who Lucille, the woman from the first book of this series, was until almost a third of the way into the book. I don't know if reading Lucille first would have helped, but readers with short attention spans probably won't stick around for the payoff.

Although it was hard to maintain interest in this book until all the plots and subplots converge, I do like the artwork enough to look for more from this author.

*Received a review copy from NetGalley

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