FOLLOWING the success of the recently renewed Netflix adaptation of her beloved graphic novel series Heartstopper, this is an honest and genuinely joyful LGBT romance among a sea of representation centred around the trauma of its gay characters.
Alice Oseman’s debut novel follows a character recognisable from the Heartstopper series, Charlie’s older sister Tori Spring. Now Solitaire gives Tori a story of her own when her tendency toward pessimism is challenged by new experiences and relationships.
Tori is not a complete loner. She has a group of friends at school, mostly because of the influence of her one truly close friend Becky, but she rarely spends time with them outside of school and struggles to really feel connected in any of their conversations. Mostly she sticks to her online blog and trying to stay for the most part invisible to the people at school, many of whom she doesn’t understand.
She feels like she has always been this way – pessimistic and often sad in a quiet, numb kind of way that makes it even harder to reach out to all the people her own age who seem so bright and sociable.
It is only upon the appearance of a new character that the path of a life she had considered entirely mundane begins to change. After following a series of post-it notes with arrows to the computer room of her school, she discovers an anonymous blog by the name of “Solitaire” – a blog unlike her own and any of those she has ever seen.
This one is specific to her school, and operates with the intent of bringing excitement through pranks that grow in scale and danger every day.
Yet Tori is not the only one who followed the post-it notes. Michael Holden also followed the clues and now is determined to find out more, and reaches out to Tori as his accomplice for this mystery, even as she feigns disinterest.
Mostly she’s shocked and confused by Michael. He is everything she’s not. He’s positive and excitable and desperate to connect to people – and now her. At the beginning his insistent passion for people and the world and all the stories they contain annoys her, but in part she is uncharacteristically curious about him and so they start to spend more time together.
No matter what they feel for each other and the journey they go on together, the key thing to remember about Solitaire is found on the cover of the book: “This is not a love story”.
The way their relationship develops alongside what they know about the Solitaire blog is about what they teach each other, which is worth more to both of them than romance. Tori is of course still reserved, and it would be unnecessary and a disservice to change her character, but she learns from Michael that there are no “happy people”, that everyone is just happy sometimes and doing their best.
This is only one of both subtle and shining messages found in this book that’s important for teenagers to hear, and carry with them through the hard times.
