I can't really talk about them without spoilering, so I'll mark where I'm about to get into spoilers.
These are an interesting combination of comic style and prose style. Each book alternates chapters between two POV characters. One is written entirely in comic format, while the other is illustrated prose.
All the characters are seventh graders at the same school.
These fit into the newer genre of graphic novels for kids very well. They're not on the level of the Berrybrook series, but they're not bad at all. Not as dramatic and heavy as Raina Telgemeier and Shannon Hale's stuff. They do have one aspect that's very different and that is the twist ending. The first two books have quite unexpected endings. The third doesn't, but there is a little reveal near the end. It's just not as dramatic as the first two.
So from here on out, if you want to read these...and I do recommend them...don't go any farther than this. I'm going to discuss each one with spoilers, including spoilers for the twists.
First up is Invisible Emmie. Emmie is our prose chapter protagonist. Emmie is a very quiet, artistic girl. She doesn't let anyone see who she really is except her best friend Brianna and her family. Her mother works at a fitness center and is obsessed with health stuff. I can't remember what she said her dad did, but he's quiet like she is. She has two college-age older siblings who aren't in the story at all.
The comic chapters belong to Katie, who basically has a perfect life. Popular, lots of friends, boys like her, athletic, successful at everything she does.
The entirety of Emmie's book, after a few chapters of setting the stage, takes place during a single school day. You see how Emmi struggles with avoiding communication with people. Everything is fine until lunch, when she and Brianna write goofy love poems to their unattainable crushes. Emmie accidentally drops hers and it's found by the school douchebag, who of course tells everyone. Emmie spends the rest of the day trying to deal with the aftermath.
While Emmie struggles, Katie watches. Emmie's crush has asked Katie out, so Katie watches how he acts during the day. She comes to Emmie's rescue a few times, eventually leading up to telling the crush she wants nothing to do with him because he teased Emmie once, alongside his friends.
That leads to Emmie yelling at Katie in the hallway, telling her she doesn't need to be rescued. Emmie has to pass her crush, the douchebag guy, and their friend on her way to art class and douchey guy teases her. She retaliates and he does the same. Then both she and her crush tell him to shut up and then burst into laughter. They walk to art together and by the end of class, they're friends, and Emmie has also opened up to another girl in class, Sarah.
At the end of the day, Emmie goes on Brianna's bus to hang out and study with her. Brianna sees a picture of Katie she drew and asks who it is.
Yeah. This is the twist.
You see, despite looking like she was there the whole time, Katie never was. She doesn't exist. Katie is a fantasy of Emmie's, having all the things she wishes she does. So all her scenes only happen in Emmie's head. Emmie has grown a lot as a person and she opens up to more people as the book comes to its end.
There are some neat visual things, too. Emmie is colored with a gray wash over her for almost the entire book. It's only at the very end, as she opens up and talks, that she gradually comes into normal color. Katie, on the other hand, begins to go gray. You can see her standing outside the bus window as Emmie talks to Brianna and slowly Katie fades away. It's quite a poignant ending, both written and visually. I'm not doing it justice one bit, but it's really good.
Despite being called Positively Izzy, I think Brianna comes across as more the main character. Izzy has the prose and Brianna the comic chapters.
I didn't get a great impression of Brianna from Emmie's book. She got mad at Emmie, because Emmie took both fake love notes and Brianna was afraid she'd dropped both of them, not just Emmie's own. So in her time of greatest crisis, Emmie is abandoned by Brianna, who's supposed to be super smart, but clearly isn't when it comes to friends.
This book has her getting saddled with a performance in the talent show thanks to an actor that got sick. Brianna's mom is the new drama teacher, so Brianna agrees to perform. Her dad is also another teacher at the same school. Her parents are divorced. Brianna is teamed up with another smart student, Dev, and he helps her learn the scene and some acting basics.
The prose chapters belong to Izzy, who is not actually named Isabelle or anything like that. Her nickname comes from something completely different. Izzy, unlike Brianna, isn't good at school and only wants to perform. Her chapters have her forgetting to do a take home test and the punishment for this is that she can't do the talent show that night. Her younger sister helps her sneak out so she can go perform and face her punishment later. Naturally, this scheme falls apart and she's caught, but her mom allows her to perform anyway.
Both girls are likeable characters, though also clearly flawed, and their situations both work out in the end.
The final chapter belongs to Brianna, who's at a family gathering where they're celebrating her mother's birthday. And they yell out "Happy birthday...IZZY!"
Yep, all along you assumed the chapters took place at the same time, but they didn't. Izzy's are in the past and you can reread them and watch the fun of her meeting Brianna's dad. You can see how her sisters have grown up in the final chapter. And you can see how all along the signs were there because there is literally no interaction with any of the characters from the different chapters. There's a nice sidestep where Brianna and Dev are talking about how good the 5th person's solo act is and that's where Izzy's spot was in her past talent show, so you assume they mean her.
I didn't like this one as much as Emmie's, but it was still quite good and fun.
Jaime is a character you've seen in the past two books. In the first, she's more of an antagonist, known as one of the two Gossip Girls. In the second, she's just kinda there in a few background scenes.
Jaime gets the prose chapters. The comic belong to Maya, the other Gossip Girl. The other two characters I don't remember from either previous book.
Jaime is having friend drama, because her group of friends has changed and they've basically told her that she's not cool enough to hang out with them anymore. Led by the horrific bitch Celia, they're quite the terror. Think those Junior Plastics from Mean Girls.
So the book has Jaime dealing with being dumped. She's friends with Anthony, who's Brianna's crush in Emmie's book, and through him, she starts hanging out with Emmie, Brianna, Sarah and Tyler (Emmie's crush). Jaime has a few run-ins with nasty Celia, culminating in Celia almost untying Jaime's bikini top in the pool, something that ends up outing her as the bully she is.
Maya's chapters are about her changing friendship with Jaime and what it's like to be friends with popular mean girl Celia. At the end, Maya saves Jaime from being topless and realizes who her real friends are.
No twist in this one. I'm not going to explain in detail, but the aha moment is a connection between two adult characters.
I liked this one, but not quite as much as the other two. Although I do like Jaime as a character and her maturity by the end of the book. She realizes how she acted in the past two books was terrible and actually apologizes for it. Maya I don't really care for, but perhaps in a future book where she wasn't an antagonist half the time, I'd like her.
The fourth book is about Brianna. Again. I would have preferred Sarah, but maybe she'll get a future book.
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