I was in a mood. I’ve read a lot of “serious” literature this year and had been on a literary fiction streak. Which is fine. It’s great! I love literary fiction. But I just wanted to read something that I could fly through and would take me no time at all—right in the middle of reading a Booker shortlist book. I walked over to my TBR shelves and… there! A YA (or is it MG?) graphic novel that I had been intending to read for writing comps.

I probably forgot the premise of Ghost Roast by sisters Shawnee and Shawnelle Gibbs while it waited on my TBR shelf. It is Ghostbusters-esque, but more modern, and centered in a New Orleans, Black family with a Black protagonist. It was really easy to read. I enjoyed my time with it. I learned even more about graphic novels (since I haven’t really read that many), and I only had a few complaints.

Blurb: Chelsea is finally fitting in with the popular crowd after changing schools from the school where everyone knew her as the daughter of a paranormal removal expert. But when her dad floods social media with a new ad series and Chelsea gets grounded for the summer working in the family business, Ghost Roast, her social life threatens to come tumbling down again. However, Chelsea can’t seem to escape her actual talent dealing with ghosts, especially when that ghost is pretty cute.

Ghost Roast is a standalone graphic novel. It really is quite cute and innocent and meant for a young audience. There are some things that we’re mentioning here, like slavery and bullying, but not in an emotionally heavy way.

Those complaints I said I had? I know I’m not a graphic novel enthusiast, but the whole bald heads when characters appear farther back in the panel? I found that super weird and distracting. My husband said it looked like the illustrator was rushed and forgot to finish the illustration. I think it’s a style choice, but unlike the cute style choices (like sweat beads for nervousness or two bodies to show the character is of two minds), this one felt like the wrong choice. The whited-out eyes were also confusing me, because I wanted them to have something to do with the paranormal, but apparently, it’s just surprise.

But those are pretty finicky things, and I think kids will love this book, or at least find it entertaining. I read it in a part of a day (which is one of the reasons I don’t read a lot of graphic novels, but it’s also why I picked it up today). Another reason? Graphic novels tend to lack emotional depth, as if we’re just skimming the story. It takes lots of words, or at least time, to really get to know a character, a place, a story.

Ghost Roast was just plain cute and fun. Do I recommend it? Yes.

And then I ate my words about graphic novels lacking emotional depth.

I had one other YA graphic novel on my TBR shelf and I thought, why not now? Two days later, I had read the first three volumes of Alice Oseman’s Heartstopper series. (I already owned the first two. I bought the third off the shelf at work the next morning after staying up late finishing volume 2.) Heartstopper has been super popular for its entire run (since it began with Kickstarter). Oseman did take some time off from writing it for mental health reasons, but the sixth and final volume is finally dropping this July.

Blurb: Charlie is a prep school student (in England) who was outed the year before against his wishes and endured severe bullying. Nick is a rugby student who doesn’t even know who Charlie is when they are paired together in homeroom. But they become fast friends. Then besties. And then they become something more. But being gay—or bisexual—is not an easy path, and nor is first love.

I can’t tell you how hard and how fast I fell for the protagonists of this series. I honestly thought the series was going to be just adequate. Then I thought I probably wouldn’t read past the first one because where was the plot?

Didn’t need it. I don’t know how Oseman does it—magic, perhaps—but Charlie and Nick are by far the most endearing graphic novel characters I have read, and I suspect they are why this series has been so popular. (There is now a Netflix series, by the way, but I’m not sure how much I want to overwrite the Charlie and Nick that appear on the page. Maybe I’ll watch it after the book series is complete. There are three seasons that are supposed to wrap up with a movie later this year.) The illustrations are really simple and straightforward; the words look like a high schooler inked them in, but I was lost in the world, hardly paying attention to the trappings at all.

On the negative side, the storyline is a bit simplistic. I was hooked, which was partly the fault of Oseman for putting cliffhangers at the end of each volume, but these storylines are both realistic and extremely simple. I might not have minded that, actually, except that they sometimes came across as preachy and teach-y, like “This is how it should go, folks, and this is how you do it.” Oh, and by the way, we’re going to make sure we cover every single sexual identity and gender identity along the way. Which means not only did the plot meander, but oftentimes the characters felt too perfect, wise way beyond their years, in a world that was strangely idyllic, at least in the long run. It’s pretty neat, I guess, by which I mean tidy. I wasn’t always wondering anything. I wasn’t always I have to keep reading this, and yet I did because I just wanted to hang with Charlie and Nick. 4-ever.

I have been charmed. I see myself reading all six of these suckers and pretty quickly (which is easy since a graphic novel like this can go down in no time at all). Once again, I am on the outside of this world in so many ways (just beginning with age), but that’s why we read, isn’t it? To walk a mile in someone else’s shoes, to discover a new world. And this is a world that I am loving sinking in to, even if I’m not a teen who needs direction on how to discover and manage their sexual identity as well as mental health (which is what this series, at times painfully so, seems to be attempting to do; I am thankful that it has been there to help many teens along the way).

I’m just having a super pleasant time and enjoying my time with these lovable goofballs.