★★★☆☆

Written, illustrated and translated from the French by Elizabeth Holleville, Summer Spirit captures the headiness of summer intertwined with the trials of coming of age. Spending the summer as usual at her grandmother’s with her sister and cousins, Louise finds that they are growing up without her. Whilst her sister and cousins want to spend the summer staying out late and meeting boys, Louise makes an unlikely friend in Lisa, the 60 year old ghost of a teenage girl.

The pastel colours, lots of muted but striking oranges, greens, pinks and purples, encapsulate the languid, dreamy quality of summer – especially carefree adolescent summers. Like most graphic novels I’ve read, this is a coming-of-age snapshot that touches on the common experiences of growing up as a young girl from exploring your sexuality, socialising, jealousy, self-confidence, friendship and developing bodies.

The added supernatural element sets Summer Spirit apart somewhat, and is the entire reason I immediately issued this to myself after shelving something right next to it when working at the library. The ghost details in here are really original, lightly exploring Lisa’s ghostly abilities but also threading in shades of darkness which built an additional layer of tension to the intricate difficulties of friendship.

As much as I enjoyed the story and the characters, I just wanted more depth and I think the graphic novel noticeably lacks it. It reads very quickly at just 262 pages, which means that it raises a vast range of topics but only touches on most of them on a single occasion. I also found the lack of transitioning or captioning difficult, as Holleville would jump ahead in time and place without any indication such as a time-stamp or location tag, things which could easily and quickly be fixed. I enjoyed the time I spent with this but I just needed a little bit more.