This is not a sponsored post.
I love this comic so much and it has such an importance to me. It’s actually funny, I wrote out an entire review of this book talking about how I read this comic as a kid, only to look up the publishing date and realize that This One Summer came out in 2014. It’s weird, and I don’t know why, but I have a strong memory of reading this comic when I was eleven (which would have been in 2006, eight years before the book actually came out). I know I read this comic in at least 2015, but even then I remember commenting to my friends how much I loved this book as a kid, despite the fact that I would have been reading This One Summer for the first time.
I guess I could attribute my publishing date mix-up to the fact that I read a lot of comics as a kid, and I may have just confused This One Summer with something else I read which was either similar in subject matter or in name, but I honestly think it was something else. When I was a kid I had a best friend who was exactly like Rose. He was actually younger than me, but he was just as manipulative and pushy as Rose is. As a kid, I was pretty much exactly like Windy; loud, weird, and kind of dorky. When I read This One Summer back in 2015, I combined its story and my own childhood memories together.
I think, in a weird way, when I read This One Summer back in 2015, I wished that I had read the comic when I was a kid and I somehow manifested that desire into a memory. If I had read this comic back when I was eleven and seen a character like Windy I don’t think I would have felt so alone all the time. I think, weirdly, Windy retroactively gave the child version of myself the permission to be weird, loud, chubby, and silly. And even as I sit here, writing this response out, I’m wishing of a way I could let eleven-year-old me read this comic like I incorrectly remember because maybe then I would have felt less alone.
Emotional reaction aside, This One Summer is absolutely beautiful. The art style is absolutely wonderful and invokes a nostalgic feel that only adds to the overall tone of the comic. The use of the single tone of blue somehow communicates the bittersweet atmosphere while also being aesthetically pleasing and is indicative of Jillian Tamaki’s illustration style. The writing is also superb and manages to weave together several stories with ease.
This One Summer is a great comic that I would recommend to anyone who loves comics or just really likes a good story.