DNF @ Chapter 3

Trigger warnings: Abuse, fat shaming, bulimia, slut shaming.

I'll keep this review short.
Were I to know there were going to be so many trigger warnings, I wouldn't have picked this up. The book starts with Val in a job interview, and from therw the book tries to be too edgy, and it bothered me from the start. I personally couldn't stomach the fat shaming, abuse, and adults forcing teenagers to lose weight by smoking cigarettes. This book wasn't for me, and I couldn't force myself to continue reading it when I felt so uncomfortable.

Thank you Netgalley and publisher for the e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I devoured this graphic novel! The art style was fantastic, the panels really well thought-out and drawn, and I especially loved the idea that this might be someone's first exposure to the Riot Girls era. From the development of the characters, going from being the quiet, well-mannered daughter everyone wants her to be to the badass music rocker who goes on a tour with her best friend and plays for the masses, not caring what boys want from her or when men try to make her shut up, this just made me happy, angry, elated - yes, in that order.
Fantastic story! Can't wait to pick up more by this author in the future!

This comic was great. It is about a teenage girl finding her way to herself, through music and friendship and hard times. It's an ode to riot grrl and the punk rock scene. I could smell the shitty clubs and sweaty pits just by looking at the pages. I was instantly transported back to my days at house shows and all ages venues and 924 Gilman and dive bars. Now my punk rock ethos is expressed via my work and my parenting and activism but I'm imagining the day I watch my kid, currently four, explore all this stuff herself. I'm terrified and I can't wait. And if a book brought all that up for me in one reading? It's a good book.

(I'd love follow-up books from Kat and Rudie's POVs, please!)

I received a free electronic ARC of this book from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. But I probably would have bought it anyway.

first id like to thank netgalley for giving me the opportunity to read this incredible book!! it wad terrible it was amazing IT WAS POWERFUL
i loved how the plot was smooth and easy to navigate thro and read. it touched me i wanted ti be part of this. I CONNECTED WITH THE CHARACTERS. id recommend this great book to everyone i know and believe will enjoy it the same way i did

I had a lot of fun reading this one. It's a great coming of age graphic novel about female friendships, finding what makes you happy, and just general teenage angst. Val is an interesting main character and I loved getting to follow her story of self discovery.

Outside of my normal genre but I loved the feminism of this book. I devoured it in a day. A nice reminder that doing what you love is enough.

"We had to fight to be here!" Yes, girls! Yes, rock bands! Yes, girl rock bands!

I would for sure be a Proper Ladies fan! This is a great coming of age story for the riot grrrl generation and everyone who is continuously influenced by it. A young girl finding herself and discovering her own likes and dislikes, breaking out of the expectations dictated to her. I saw so much of my own story, down to licking hand stamps to get into shows. Finding your own path and voice through music.

Loved the very minimal but strategic use of color--green vomit, pink blushing cheeks, red bloody noses. It emphasized impact that moved the story forward without adding more text or panels.

"My Riot" is a must read graphic novel. It's a startlingly intense coming of age story that many 90s kids will deeply identify with, especially if they grew up loving the punk music scene. Val's transformation will have readers cheering her on as she asserts her own independence and discovers her true self. The ending is particularly wholesome. Highly recommended for all collections aimed at teens and up.

My Riot is about a ballerina, Val, from a conservative family who meets a Punk Rocker and forms a grunge band. It is Valley Girl set in the 90's. Val and her friends break all the girl coming of age guidelines. This book does give a positive view on a girls body and speaks a bit to the feminist in us. I enjoy Graphic Novel, but I will stick with the Manga and darker GNs. I guess this was no what I expected, that does not mean it is not a good read. It just was not for me. I am giving this a 3 star review.

"My Riot" is the story of Val Simmons, a teenager trying to find where she fits in and how to become the woman she's meant to be. She is encountering many of the typical trials and tribulations we go through as we age - are we enough? How do we grow and become the person we want to be without disappointing those around us? Can we be happy following the life that’s already laid out before us, or do we rebel to follow something that feels so right?

We first meet Val as she dreams of being a ballerina, though the pressure may more trouble than it's worth. Little does she know she's soon to make a new best friend who introduces her to the world of punk and riot grrl. Val must decide if her passion truly lies in dancing, or if this new scene of strong, bad ass girls starting their own movement. The story ramps up quickly from here, with Val falling into the scene and becoming a firm believer in women succeeding in a man’s world all while screaming “Girls to the front!”

I sadly got into riot grrl well after the movement originated, but Val's story will touch home if you've ever wanted to start a band and being proud of yourself even if you don’t “fit in”. So many girls have lived this story in some way, and reading a story like Val's let's you know you're not alone as you navigate that crazy time known as puberty and finding yourself. The story can at time feel rushed, as we are limited to a single graphic novel, and the characters can fall into stereotype, but you can't help but root for our girls to make it in a scene that doesn't always welcome those of the female persuasion. We’ve read this story before, but we’re brought to love the characters even if they may not always be likable people. I would’ve loved to have seen this story fleshed out a bit more, but nothing is taken away from the story in it’s brief telling.

If you were a teen in the 90s who felt like they just didn't fit in, this is a sweet little graphic novel written just for you.

A lovely story following a young girl breaking out from expectations that have been set for her, to find what she really wants out of life.

A strong , feminist story, would definitely recommend to others.

*thank you to netgalley and Oni Press for the review copy*

My Riot is a YA graphic novel set in the 90s. It follows a girl from a conversative family as she moves away from what her family expects from her and treads her own path. Although I didn't relate to the character's rebellion, I still found lots of elements and references that I recognised, growing up in the 90s.
I do like how the book tackled difficult subjects but, I would warn anyone who doesn't want to read about eating disorders that maybe this book isn't for them. It is set in the 90s and some of the opinions expressed by the characters feel dated. I felt quite uncomfortable about the pressure put on the main character to lose weight. I'm glad the book didn't shy away from the tough things that teenagers go through though. Consciously or subconsciously, the pressure, especially in the dance world, exists.
I was a big fan of the artwork in this book. The title pages in particular were stunning. I would hang them up as pieces of art. It suited the punk style of the story really well. I can almost imagine some of the pages hung up as band posters.
The book was quite fast paced and intense. This was due to the format and didn't leave much time for discovering the motivation behind the decisions. I felt that this suited the characters though and you ended up with impulsive, flawed characters acting on their feelings.
Overall I really enjoyed my reading experience and will keep my eyes open for any future releases from this team.
I received a free e-copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Let's start this discussing my childhood. I took ballerina lessons as a small child. Not for long, I will admit, but for a couple of years when I was 5-7. Dancing was something me and my sister did, because my mum encourage it. I don't remember much about those years, but I do remember, even from that young age, that ballerinas had to be pretty, perfect and thin. There was no two ways about that. As a child, that's a pretty damaging system to believe in. As I grew up, I suffered from eating disorders that weren't necessarily linked to my weight (although these days my relapses are) and I know that, had I stuck to dancing, my eating disorders would have been much more severe.

Why am I bringing this up?

Well, this book focuses on Val Simmons, a teenage girl who is an aspiring dancer. One day, her dance instructor pulls her aside to weigh her and demands she loses weight. She weights 115lbs. As Val tries to lose this weight, she begins to skip meals, pretending to her mother that she is eating, smoking cigarettes and taking laxatives. Not only that, there are some very graphic illustrations that involve invoked vomiting. Very triggering, and I think it's something that needs to be highlighted first going into this graphic novel, as it is the main motivation for the story.

Val begins to lose her passion for her dancing, and when she meets Kat, cool and quirky with a rebellious streak, she discovers a new passion: music. The two begin to form a band, covering popular punk classics and make waves in the punk scene. Slowly, they begin to make their own music, writing feminist tracks about sex, body image and their place in the world, as they discover themselves in this world.

What I really enjoyed about this book was the empowerment that it gives young women. Val, whose agency is limited in the beginning of the book, always striving to be society's perfect image of women, whose mother grounds her for possessing condoms rather than praising her precautions, and the strict rules she must adhere, becomes freer as the book moves on. She learns to accept her sexuality, to accept her weight and her appetite, to realise the toxicity of certain influences on you, and break free of these. Kat is a character whose rebellion speaks more to identity than anything and as she helps Val become herself, she's supportive if not a little in the background. The male love interests in this book felt a little one dimensional, and it was hard to care about Kat's relationship to them. They seemed as though they were there purely to slut shame and belittle Val, and rather than feel sorry for her, I did feel my eyes roll in the back of my head. I struggled to see the point? I feel they'd have been better characters had they supported Val in response to the sexism and slut shaming she received from audience members when she performed. It would have had more impact.

However, something about this book that did bug me was the pacing. Each chapter skipped several months and perhaps even years, and so often the motivations and development of the characters seemed off. Val's mother went from being very overbearing and shaming her daughter, executing control over her, to letting her be free with the band without much reason why. There weren't many conversations between the two to sort out their issues and therefore it didn't seem consistent with her character. Likewise, towards the end of the graphic novel, it seems as though the band are doing really well and then all of a sudden, it ended? There wasn't any real explanation of what happened to lead up to the final chapter, and it felt incredible rushed.

Overall, I felt this was a lovely little story about female empowerment, but I feel like it needed to be longer and slightly more developed.

Trigger warnings for this books: fatphobia, eating disorders, vomiting, slut shaming, control

*a review will be included on my youtube channel in vlogs throughout the month*

I enjoyed this graphic novel, it dealt with fat shaming and relationship with parents and accepting yourself and owning your passion and accepting change and going along with it. I really liked how it took on fat shaming, i am specifically mentioning fat shaming because it didn't talk about "body shaming", it was just about "fat shaming". I think the purpose was to show how double size women are forced to lose weight by skinny women but it didn't show how skinny people can also be pressurised into eating too much. If the purpose was to solely talk about fat shaming? Then yeah it was good. But if the purpose was to spread "body positivity"? it failed in that regards. I liked how Val accepted herself and how her parents accepted her! I didn't very much love the ending, i think it was okay. The illustrations in this are really good.
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Rating: 3/5 ✨

Thank you NetGalley for providing me with an Advanced Readers Copy of this graphic novel in exchange for an honest review!

I was disappointed by this novel. I love the 90's grunge aesthetic and the artwork was amazing. A coming of age book with a feminist rock band? Sign me up!

However, I found myself page after page seeing completely missed opportunities. I believe my biggest problem with it was the pacing. Nothing in the book felt earned. Not even the friendships formed, which are supposed to be a central theme within the story. I also had problems with the love interests, as everyone is immediately smitten with our protagonist within the first frame. The two boys felt like props. There was no chemistry or development, the relationships went from point A to point B and any conflicts that arose felt pointless and undeserved. I feel as if this had a lot to do with the pacing problems. We jumped so quickly between the formation of the band and the rise to local fame. None of their success felt earned.

This book also consists of a lot of topics I don't feel were handled properly. As an example, an authority figure forces our protagonist to develop an eating disorder, by body shaming and giving advice on how to loose the weight by forming a tobacco addiction. This also leads them to bulimia. This was probably here to depict the stress of her day to day life, but it was handled very poorly. Once the band is formed it's never mentioned again. In fact, once the band is formed we're supposed to notice a change in the protagonist but I saw none. I felt as if there was no character development in this coming of age story, which is what I really look for when reading these types of books.

This was all in all a big disappointment. I'm sure if you're a teen who feels constrained by day to day life you might enjoy this book. I did enjoy the artwork and the 90's grunge aesthetic, but that's about it.

I just loved this
Probably as a woman who’s a mom of a preteen. It’s scary but beautiful to see Val struggled ,learned and finally find herself thru the exhausting journey of young adult life. Live your passions and be happy with it.
Wonderful books for girls.. feminist but for the good reasons. Raw truth sometimes but still truth

This YA graphic novel perfectly captures the Riot Grrrl scene of the early 1990s. Another reviewer says it's unrealistic for them to get a gig despite having barely played and not knowing their instruments. I saw a lot of shows/bands around this time and this was very common especially among Riot Grrrl groups where there was so much need to express themselves so quickly. As a real-world example, look up Emily's Sassy Lime. They learned as they went. (And, of course, male-dominated punk bands have a long history of not knowing how to play their instruments!)

The body image stuff was great, as were the song titles and lyrics ("I don't want to hold your hand, follow your lead. I'm not your little princess anymore, Daddy, now I bleed!"). The jealous straight-edge boyfriend, the touring burnout, and even the fact that it was all just lightning in a jar and soon over except for the coffeeshop job in adulthood -- everything was believable and fun.

I've read through the negative reviews, and I get many of them. If I had a criticism, it's like the author illustrated the Wikipedia entry for any random Riot Grrrl band, meaning that the telling is very tight and predictable for anyone who lived through it. If it weren't a YA book, I would want it to spool out slower and delve into the other characters more.

And, of course, as a YA book, some will criticize it for language (lots of it), sex, intoxicants, and fighting. I think it would've been better off not pitched at the YA market, even if that's where the graphic novel money is, but damn, this was fun!

I'd like to say it inspired me to pull out my Bikini Kill and Heaven's to Betsy albums, but I never put them away...

Bechdel test: Pass

#NetGalley #MyRiot

A gorgeously drawn graphic novel with an interesting narrative, plot, and concepts. Definitely recommended for fans of this genre.

This was actually a pretty great graphic novel about a girl who finds her destiny as a member of a riot grrl band in the nineties. I really loved the art and the story was good too - if nothing maybe a bit short? I really liked it though.

I did not expect to read My Riot as fast as I did. I started to read it with no intention to read it all the way, I just wanted to take a peek. But it made me so curious and it really got me interested!! I love how it showed the struggles women, especially during our teenage years, go through. All the expectations and the judgement we get from other people and even from the people closest to us.

The one thing I absolutely loved about this is how I felt like I’ve been reading and following Val’s story for a long time but, in reality, it’s only been less than an hour since I knew her. It showed only a part of her life, but I felt how much that part mattered to her through the way her story was told.

Overall a great read! Especially for times whenever you want to take a break from complicated and heavy books or stories.

My favorite lines:

"I'm not a slogan. I'm not a t-shirt
I don't need a label."

"I'm not a lot of things.
But I'm happy."