It does not disappoint. Well, much, anyway.
Brave follows Jensen, who thinks of his life at school as a video game with multiple enemies to hopefully escape the notice of. Only when he's pulled into a project done by the newspaper staff does he slowly...very slowly...come to realize he's being bullied, even by those he thinks of as his friends.
He also comes to the sad realization that he really has no friends.
He tries to fit in with the art club, but they all get involved in a project that one obnoxious girl leaves him out of, so he helps the newspaper club, but doesn't realize they're mostly just using him for busy work. He reads a couple popular books because the authors are visiting the school arts festival, but ends up missing the festival due to illness. He tries his best to fit in, although I admit that his minor failings sometimes frustrate me. The newspaper club asks him to read a small document before they interview him for their project and he just never does it, even though he knows he should. I'm a bit anal, like Jenny the newspaper girl but less batshit, so I found this trait of his putting off his work to be annoying. And he keeps daydreaming and drawing in his math class, even though he's not doing well and the teacher is intimidating.
Jensen though is mostly a likeable character. He's just got some minor moments when he's frustrating.
I think the only real downfall of this story is that it lacks the backstory of Awkward. There are no scenes outside the school. You don't learn about Jensen's home life or Jenny's or either of the two bullies who plague Jensen. Awkward went more into depth that way and the story was deeper for it.
It does end on a nice cliffhanger, so I hope to see how that went in the next volume...and there'd better be a next volume!
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