Solid 3.5. Had some very funny and relatable moments

Meh. The characters in this book were so unlikeable. The only ones I had any time for were the couple letting Pascal stay with them. Pascal himself just comes across as such a whiney jerk and the woman he's persuing is dishonest and boring.
It's just getting two stars cos at least it's hort and easy to read.

After Pascal and his girlfriend of 9 years break up, he moves into the spare bedroom of a friend's place, where books pile up and up and up. He has lost creative inspiration lately, so his comics making has disappeared and he takes a job doing manual labor, which he's not great at. So it's gotta be running that keeps him afloat -- after all, it makes him feel great. And it's going well until he hurts himself, has to get physical therapy, and then he's no longer able to run.

Lucky for Pascal, he can solve the case of books going missing at the local book shop. When he attends a reading and sees a girl stealing one of his books, he suspects she's the one with sticky fingers the store's been talking about. So he tracks her down and then ... promptly decides he has feelings for her beyond her thievery.

So what does he do when he collects those stolen books and tries returning them to the bookstore? Does he tell his girlfriend he knows her secret? Does he out the girl to the bookstore employees? Does he indict himself in the crime?

This is an amusing graphic novel (in translation!). It's solid, though it's not my favorite. I didn't get to know much of Pascal beyond his being in a really sad place and while that works for a lot of comics -- Julia Wertz springs to mind -- I didn't necessarily feel like there was heart behind this one in the same way. I never connected to his situation nor felt particularly interested in his picking himself up.

A quick read and one that book people would enjoy, though, especially because Pascal has a book hoarding problem of epic proportions and this new relationship is not going to help things.

Awkward. If I had to sum this book up in one word, that's what I'd go with. Pascal (the character) is awkward. The whole set-up winds up being awkward. And the simple line-drawing panels are awkwardly far afield from the usual graphic novel fare offered up these days. The tag line on Goodreads "A hilarious romantic comedy about kleptomania and booklovers" caught my attention and the plot--Pascal notices a young woman in a bookshop stealing his book, so he decides to play amateur detective and figure out who she is and see if he can catch her in the act...falling for her in the process--sounded original and intriguing. But the story just isn't. Intriguing, that is. It isn't hilarious either. Pascal is so awkward it's painful, but he is also not at all compelling, so one doesn't really sympathize with him.

And you can't tell me that Pascal went with his bad back and worked in construction for more than one day without re-injuring and worsening his condition. Yeah--it happens, but it should have happened immediately.

I still think the plot was a good concept. I wish it had been rendered more effectively.

First posted on my blog

This was pretty cute. Read it while shelving graphic novels and it ended up being a good find!

Quebecois