He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not (My Boyfriend is a Monster 7)

Title: He Loves Me; He Loves Me Not (My Boyfriend is a Monster #7)
Author: Robin Mayhall
Illustrator: Kristen Cella (with others)
Publisher: Graphic Universe (Imprint of Lerner)
Copyright: 2013
Price: $9.95 paperback
ISBN: 978-0-7613-8548-6
-----------
Summary and Quick Thoughts: Oh football. For the little town of Rojo, Texas, that is everything. When there is a game, the whole town can be found at the game. Rather, most of the town can be found at the game. New student Serena Stevens is not in the mood to watch football. She misses her old town and hates that her family moved her to a small town. Luckily for her, her best friend from her previous school still talks to her, but she’s the one that convinces Serena to go to the football game that changes Serena’s life.

At the football game, Serena meets Cam, epic smart student who occasionally shows up at school. After that, she meets Lance, the captain of the football team. As the story progresses, Serena starts to date Lance, but begins work on a project about Jekyll and Hyde with Cam. Unfortunately, Lance has a “thing” against Cam and as time goes on Lance gets violent and only wants to focus on football, leaving Serena sad and confused.

Serena's love triangle adds another strong entry in this series with the added bonus of more dialogs from Mr. James and Mr. Barry. See my further thoughts below.
---------
Recommended Audience: high school
--------
Things to be aware of: emotional abuse; mild violence;
----------
Further Thoughts: Finally! Another volume with the strong heroines that drew me into this series. I missed the spunk and sharp wit of the girls and something about volume 8 left a bad taste in my mouth after reading it (review forthcoming).

That’s not to say this volume didn’t make me uncomfortable. When I grabbed this book from our “holds-waiting-to-be-filed,” the person processing holds that day made a comment that she was worried this series was all about boyfriends who were horrible to their girlfriends, like emotionally or physically abused. I assured her this was not the case and then read this one at lunch.

WEEEELLLL. It does have emotional abuse it in, which is very interesting, yet it is how this volume handles it that makes this a stronger graphic novel. Serena does continue dating Lance in the story. She wants to get more from him, but he’s upset when she won’t talk about football. As his anger issues come to light, he grows even angrier at her when she doesn’t go to the games. Her parents try to support her, but they ultimately leave her to start figuring this out on her own. I do feel that if a real issue came to light, they would intervene. I did find myself wanting to yell at Serena for putting up with Lance. She should have dumped him. She was smarter than that, but she was smitten with Lance, even if it wasn’t convincing.

This is probably my only issue with this story. Serena seems smart enough to step away, and I couldn’t figure out why she was staying. She seemed to see the signs, but somehow she convinced herself to stay. I think I needed to see more of her thoughts and how she really justified it, but somehow I couldn’t really believe the back and forth between her and Lance.

Now, about Barry and James. Oh boy! They finally do more than just hang out on the sidelines. Mr. James quips about “you girls” which speaks to me in this culminating with a huge event involving the girls and the boys of previous volumes (especially when some disappearing). Barry’s office is shown more with the famous X-Files poster “I want to believe.” That somehow speaks volumes about him to me. His posters are so…mixed. He is definitely traveling around with Mr. James which he hints as much.

If you’ve missed something from the previous volumes (I know I did), its back in this one. An enjoyable read, and I forgot to mention that our girl is a little curvy in this one. Keep the monster loves coming!
------
Bonus: Not so much as a bonus, but something confusing. Kirkus has this volume in their reviews, but the publication date says “May 1, 2013.” This is not exactly true as I found it in my library system, on the shelf, and Amazon (sorry, it’s the be-all/end-all on publication dates for me) says it is all ready out, so…maybe a misprint?

Source: Library copy.